A district court in Minnesota has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release Michael Opeoluwa Egbele, an illegal Nigerian immigrant who entered the U.S. in 2003 and was arrested for a drug offence in 2012.

Senior U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard on Wednesday gave immigration authorities until February 20 to free Mr Egbele and file a status report confirming his release, ruling that ICE lacked any legal grounds to keep him in custody given the peculiar circumstances surrounding his detention.

Mr Egbele’s immigration woes first began in 2012 after he was arrested for a drug offence and subsequently charged in court, where prosecutors initiated proceedings for his deportation. The Nigerian, at the time, applied for asylum and asked the court to withhold his deportation.

An immigration judge denied his asylum request and ordered his removal from the U.S. in July 2012. But ICE neither enforced the removal order nor did Mr Egbele appeal the decision.

Instead, he reached an understanding with the U.S. government that led to his release “on supervision” in December 2012. Under the terms of that arrangement, he was required to attend regular check-ins with ICE.

The arrangement ran smoothly for more than a decade until January 2026, when ICE detained Mr Egbele during a routine check-in appointment.

In between detention transfers out of state, the Nigerian petitioned the U.S. court for the district of Minnesota, arguing that he was not “notified of any purported revocation of his [order of supervision] or of an interview”, and ICE “did not provide any explanation for the purported revocation of (his order of supervision)”.

ICE contended that Mr Egbele’s order of supervision was revoked partly due to “failure to obtain or attempt to obtain a travel document to Nigeria, as required”.

Following his arrest, Mr Egbele was unable to contact his wife or lawyer immediately. It was not until around February 13 that ICE allowed him to make a brief phone call.

The Nigerian informed his wife, a U.S. citizen, that he had been detained and was being transferred out of Minnesota to another holding facility, though he was not told where. For days, his wife and lawyer were unable to locate him, as ICE did not disclose his whereabouts.

Mrs Egbele later learned from another detainee that her husband had been held at an ICE facility in Montana before being transferred again. She would only discover much later that he had been moved to another detention centre in New Mexico.

President Donald Trump’s administration insisted that Mr Egbele’s detention was “lawful” and contended that the district court in Minnesota lacked any jurisdiction, given that the Nigerian was held at an ICE facility in New Mexico.

The judge dismissed the prosecutor’s argument as lacking any substance, given ICE’s failure to expel Mr Egbele since 2012 when the court issued his final removal order.

The judge held that ICE could not abruptly back out of a decades-long arrangement to enforce a 15-year-old deportation order without demonstrating any breach of the conditions of Mr Egbele’s supervised release.

He restated that Mr Egbele’s release on supervision entitled him to due process, including proper notice of any revocation of the pre-existing order before he could be lawfully detained.

“Nothing in the brief even attempts to identify any change in circumstances that would warrant detention,” the judge stated.

Consequently, the judge ruled that Mr Egbele’s detention was “unlawful”.

“The government shall immediately release the petitioner from custody subject to and in accordance with the conditions in his preexisting Order of Supervision,” the judge ruled on February 18. No later than February 20, 2026, the government shall file a status report certifying compliance with this order,” the judge added.