A federal judge ruled that a man can no longer be detained after he crashed in St. Paul while federal agents were pursuing him.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers were attempting “a targeted vehicle stop” of the man, who is from Honduras and who the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said is in the U.S. illegally.

Officers responded to a report of a crash at 9:40 a.m. Feb. 11 at Western and Selby avenues in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood. The man crashed into two vehicles before hitting a snowbank. He was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, according to police.

The Trump administration said the goal of Operation Metro Surge was to “target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in the Minneapolis area.” DHS, which usually highlights a person’s criminal record if they have one, did not mention a record for the man in the crash. Court records indicate he has not been convicted of crimes in Minnesota.

DHS said in its statement last week that the man “tried to evade law enforcement and began driving recklessly and ran red lights, endangering public safety and law enforcement.” He had not been federally charged as of Thursday afternoon and it wasn’t known what will happen next with his immigration case.

On Monday in Georgia, a driver fleeing a stop by federal immigration officers crashed into another vehicle, killing a teacher who was headed to work.

Lauren M. Rossitto of Erickson, Zierke, Kuderer & Madsen, who took on the case as a volunteer attorney for the Minnesota Habeas Project, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus on Sunday. Such petitions challenge the legal authority of the government to detain someone.

The man, who is in his early 20s, contended his detention was “unlawful due to denial of a bond hearing,” Senior U.S. District Judge John M. Gerrard summarized in his order filed Wednesday. “… The government responds that detention is mandatory, not discretionary, and the petitioner is not eligible to be released.”

Attorneys for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Homeland Security asserted the case was different because the man “was encountered upon entering the country in 2022 and released on recognizance until he was redetained in 2026,” Gerrard summarized.

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But Gerrard wrote that the man’s previous detention and release “makes the government’s argument worse, not better. As the court has explained, if the petitioner was at some point an ‘arriving alien,’ but the government decided to release him anyway, that places the petitioner even more firmly into the discretionary detention framework.”

Furthermore, Gerrard said government attorneys “provided neither evidence nor argument that officials have conducted any of the proceedings necessary to revoke a release. … In this case the government hasn’t even produced as much as an administrative warrant.”

Gerrard ordered that if the man had been moved from Minnesota, he should immediately be returned and released from custody. Rossitto had not been able to confirm as of mid-afternoon Thursday if he’d been released. Federal attorneys have until Friday to file a status report showing they complied with the judge’s order.

Many volunteer attorneys, along with the courts, are “working around the clock” on habeas petitions, Rossitto said. “There’s such a volume that we need more help,” she said.