Judge frees couple charged with 'kidnapping' immigration agent as defense challenges government's account
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Attorneys for a couple charged with driving to a police station with a Homeland Security Investigations agent in the front seat of their vehicle are sharply disputing the government’s version of events. The incident Dec. 10 started when agents tried to question Oluwadamilola Bamigboye about his immigration status outside a Plymouth, Minn. apartment building.
According to an FBI affidavit, the Homeland Security agents were in the parking lot of an apartment complex waiting for Bamigboye, 24, who moved to the United States from Nigeria on a student visa.
Agents approached Bamigboye when he arrived with his romantic partner Rekeya Frazier, 23, in Frazier’s Jeep SUV, which she was driving.
The FBI alleges that the HSI agents walked up, showed their badges, and said they wanted to talk with Bamigboye. One agent got into the front seat of the Jeep and tried to stop Frazier from driving off. But she put the SUV in gear and headed for the New Hope Police station.
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“The agent truly believed that he was being abducted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Behar said at a Tuesday detention hearing, where he asked Magistrate Judge David Schultz to keep the couple in jail while their case proceeds.
Behar added that Frazier drove several hundred feet with the passenger door open as the agent tried to get Frazier to stop.
The prosecutor said that the couple created “a very chaotic and frantic situation.”
Defense attorney Kevin Riach, who represents Bamigboye, said he disputes “about 95 percent” of the government’s narrative.
Riach said the agents did not display their credentials when they approached the Jeep, and the government’s claim that one agent had to jump out of the way as Frazier drove off is contradicted by surveillance video.
Bamigboye dialed 911 from the back seat as Frazier was driving and the agent was in the front passenger seat.
Calling the government’s case “ludicrous,” Riach said his client “may be the first criminal in history to call 911 during the commission of his alleged crime.”
Federal public defender Jean Brandl represents Frazier, who’s Black, and said her client did not know the agents were law enforcement.
“She literally went to the police station because an unidentified white man was in her car and she didn’t know what he was doing there,” Brandl said.
Brandl added that the agent had two opportunities to get out of the vehicle but chose not to. She said he pulled out his gun and could have fired it had his finger been on the trigger when other agents following the Jeep struck it from behind on a snowy road.
“On the 911 call, Bamigboye said ICE is trying to get him,” Behar countered, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “How would he know that unless they had identified themselves as agents?”
“It’s very clear to me that neither of these defendants have a criminal history nor anything in their background that suggests in any way shape or form that they are a danger to the community,” Schultz said, rejecting Behar’s request to detain the couple.
“She’s never had a crime in her whole life,” Brandl told reporters after the detention hearing. “There’s no reason to keep a woman like that in custody. So I’m delighted that the judge let her out. That was definitely the right decision.”
Rekeya Frazier is the sister of Darnella Frazier, who as a teenager in 2020 recorded the bystander video of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Their father Richard Frazier declined to comment about the case itself but said he’s relieved that Rekeya won’t spend the holidays in jail.
“I’m glad today, I’m happy,” Richard Frazier said. “It’s been a long six days. It’s been hard to know that your daughter’s locked up and you don’t even know why she’s there, and she shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
Frazier and Bamigboye each pleaded not guilty to charges in a grand jury indictment of resisting and impeding a federal officer.
Police arrested Frazier after she arrived at the New Hope police station. Bamigboye allegedly ran into a nearby Hy-Vee grocery store, where an HSI agent arrested him.
Schultz’s decision freeing both from pretrial detention does not preclude Homeland Security from moving Bamigboye to immigration detention.
Correction (Dec. 17, 2025): An earlier version of this story misspelled Kevin Riach’s name. The post has been updated.
