US Court Orders Immediate Release of Nigerian Immigrant from ICE Custody, Citing Due Process Violation

A United States District Court has ordered the immediate release of a Nigerian immigrant from detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ruling that the government unlawfully revoked his supervised release without following proper procedures.

In a judgment delivered on February 18, 2026, Senior U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard granted a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Michael Opeoluwa Egbele. The court directed the government to release him from custody no later than February 20, 2026, and to return any personal property seized upon his detention.

Egbele, a Nigerian national who entered the United States unlawfully in 2003, had been living under an Order of Supervision since December 2012. He was initially placed in removal proceedings following a 2012 arrest on a controlled substances charge, though court records indicate no evidence of a conviction. An immigration judge denied his asylum claim and ordered him removed in July 2012, but for reasons not entirely clear in the record, the order was never enforced, and he was released on supervision.

According to court documents, Egbele remained in compliance with the terms of his supervised release for over 13 years, regularly checking in with immigration authorities as required. However, in January 2026, he was detained during a routine check-in without prior notification that his supervision status was being revoked.

The petition stated that Egbele was not informed of any revocation or given an explanation for the decision. Following his arrest, he was permitted a brief phone call to his wife, a U.S. citizen, during which he informed her he was being transferred out of Minnesota. For several days, his family and legal counsel were unable to locate him. When the petition was filed on February 14, 2026, the ICE online detainee locator system produced no records, and his whereabouts remained unknown. The government later indicated he had been moved to a detention facility in Estancia, New Mexico.

The administration argued that the Minnesota court lacked jurisdiction because Egbele was being held in New Mexico. Judge Gerrard dismissed this argument, describing the situation as a jurisdictional “shell game” and applying the “unknown custodian exception,” given that Egbele’s location was unknown at the time the petition was filed.

On the merits of the case, the government contended that the detention was lawful under federal statute because Egbele was subject to a final removal order. The judge rejected this reasoning, noting that the removal order had been final since 2012 yet was never executed. He further held that Egbele’s long-term release on supervision had conferred due process rights, which required the government to follow regulatory procedures before revoking that status.

The court found that the government failed to provide any evidence that Egbele received prior notice of the revocation or that circumstances had changed to warrant his detention. “Nothing in the brief even attempts to identify any change in circumstances that would warrant detention, and the only evidence submitted is from 2012,” Judge Gerrard wrote.

In a strongly worded assessment, he concluded, “The only conclusion to be drawn from the record is that the government has presented a post hoc justification for an indiscriminate detention and even that post hoc justification falls short of the mark.”

The court ordered that Egbele be returned to Minnesota, if necessary, and immediately released under the same conditions outlined in his original Order of Supervision. The government was also directed to file a status report by February 20 certifying compliance with the order.

The ruling serves as a sharp rebuke of ICE’s handling of long-standing supervised release cases and reaffirms the due process protections available to detainees, even those subject to final removal orders.