At approximately 2:50 p.m. on December 10, 2025, a Homeland Security Investigations agent climbed into the front passenger seat of a stranger’s Jeep in a Plymouth, Minnesota parking lot. His intention was to stop it from leaving. He did not succeed. For the next five minutes, the agent sat in the moving vehicle with his weapon drawn and his hand fighting for the gear shift, ordering the woman behind the wheel to pull over as the Jeep accelerated through snow-covered suburban streets toward a destination he could not identify.
He was on temporary detail from another HSI field office, assigned to an operation in a city he had never worked. He did not know the Twin Cities. He did not know where he was being taken. According to the FBI affidavit filed in federal court the following day, he “was in fear that he was being abducted.”
He was right.
Surveillance in the parking lot
Homeland Security Investigations is the criminal investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, one of two major branches within ICE and the one responsible for building and executing targeted immigration cases rather than carrying out broad enforcement sweeps. HSI runs approximately 7,100 special agents across 235 U.S. cities, and its operations are typically more covert and case-specific than the enforcement actions most commonly associated with ICE. On December 10, 2025, a team of HSI agents had arrived that Wednesday afternoon at a Plymouth apartment complex with one specific target in mind.
According to an affidavit signed by FBI Special Agent Terry Getsch, investigators were looking for Oluwadamilola Ogooluwa Bamigboye, 24, a Nigerian national who had allegedly overstayed his student visa. An F-1 student visa permits international students to remain in the United States for the duration of their enrolled program plus a 60-day grace period after completion.
Remaining beyond that window without securing a change of status renders a person unlawfully present, making them subject to deportation and, if the overstay exceeds one year, a potential 10-year bar from reentry to the United States. The agents had positioned themselves in an unmarked Ford Explorer SUV, watching Bamigboye’s Kia Optima from the parking lot. Three agents made up the surveillance team. Two were in plain clothes. The third wore a vest marked “POLICE” and “HSI.”
The agent trapped inside the Jeep was not among HSI’s regular Minnesota staff. He had traveled to the Twin Cities on temporary detail to assist with a broader regional immigration enforcement operation. He was unfamiliar with the area entirely.
Agents approached the Jeep
What changed the operation was the arrival of a second vehicle. Rekeya Lionesha Lee Frazier, 23, pulled into the lot in a Jeep SUV with Bamigboye seated beside her in the front passenger seat. Bamigboye and Frazier were, according to court documents, romantic partners. According to the affidavit, Bamigboye appeared to recognize the unmarked Explorer almost immediately. He pulled a mask up over his face, a detail noted in the affidavit as an apparent attempt to conceal his identity.
The agents moved in on foot, displayed their badges, and identified themselves as law enforcement. They told Bamigboye they wanted to speak with him about his immigration status. He asked what kind of police they were, and when they answered that they were HSI agents, Bamigboye allegedly jumped into the Jeep’s back seat and began screaming at Frazier to go.
“Drive! Drive! Drive! Get in the car and drive!”
The Jeep drove away
One agent got into the front passenger seat to block Frazier from leaving. A second reached into the back to pull Bamigboye out. Bamigboye allegedly shoved that second agent out of the vehicle. That agent was now outside the moving car. Only the agent in the front seat remained inside, and the Jeep was already pulling away.
He drew his weapon and ordered Frazier to stop. He warned her, according to court documents, that she was making a very bad decision and making the situation worse. Frazier allegedly pushed his hand away each time he tried to put the Jeep in park and told him that if he did not stop, she was going to crash the car. She then told him where they were going.
She was taking him to the police station.
From the back seat, Bamigboye dialed 911. The trapped agent yelled at the same dispatcher that he was a federal officer. The third HSI agent activated his lights and sirens and closed the distance in the Ford Explorer, calling local police for backup as he drove. At one point, in the snow, the Explorer inadvertently struck the back of the Jeep.
The ride ended in New Hope
The journey covered roughly two miles and lasted approximately five minutes. Frazier pulled the Jeep to a stop outside the New Hope Police Department, directly in front of City Hall. The HSI agents maneuvered the Explorer in ahead of the Jeep to pin it in place.
Bamigboye jumped out and ran across the street into a Hy-Vee grocery store. A pursuing HSI agent gave chase and linked up with a uniformed officer already inside the building. They confronted Bamigboye at the back of the store. He refused to cooperate. He was arrested at taser point, taken to the ground, and detained.
Frazier refused to exit the Jeep. Uniformed officers eventually arrived and placed her under arrest.
The federal agent was freed unharmed.
Federal charges and competing accounts
Federal prosecutors charged both Bamigboye and Frazier on December 11 under Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 111, which makes it a federal crime to assault, resist, or impede a federal officer in the performance of their duties. The statute creates three penalty tiers based on severity. Because the FBI affidavit stated that the acts involved physical contact with the agent and the intent to commit another felony, both defendants face the middle tier: up to eight years in federal prison per count.
Federal sentencing guidelines for a first offense in that category typically yield a range of 33 to 41 months. The “intent to commit another felony” element refers to Bamigboye’s alleged attempt to flee federal custody during an active enforcement operation, an act prosecutors characterize as a separate underlying offense that elevates the charge beyond simple resistance. Both were initially held at the Sherburne County Jail.
Bamigboye agreed to speak with investigators after his arrest. He denied that the agents had ever displayed their badges or credentials. He acknowledged telling Frazier to drive and pushing the agent who had reached into the back seat, but framed both acts as self-defense. He told investigators he had PTSD from being kidnapped previously while living in Nigeria, and that the approach of armed men in an unmarked vehicle had triggered that fear. Frazier declined to speak to investigators at all.
Plymouth Police Chief Erik Fadden confirmed that his department had received no advance warning the federal operation was underway. His officers learned of the incident through 911 dispatch calls reporting that a Homeland Security agent had been kidnapped inside a detainee’s vehicle. This communication gap was not accidental.Plymouth, like several neighboring municipalities in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, does not coordinate with federal immigration enforcement operations, a policy that means HSI routinely conducts surveillance and enforcement in those jurisdictions without notifying local police ahead of time.
In practical terms, it means that when something goes wrong, local officers piece together what happened the same way the public does: through emergency calls after the fact. New Hope Police Chief Tim Hoyt confirmed that his officers remained on scene until federal authorities cleared the area, but did not participate in either arrest.
Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the incident to reporters, stating that the agent was initially thrown from the vehicle, that pursuing agents called local police for backup, and that both “the illegal alien and the U.S. citizen” had been arrested. In the same statement, McLaughlin said DHS agents were experiencing a surge in assaults and threats during immigration enforcement operations across the country, calling on local officials, protesters, and the media to lower the temperature around federal enforcement activity.
On December 17, Magistrate Judge David Schultz released both defendants from pretrial detention after they entered not guilty pleas. Defense attorney Kevin Riach, who represents Bamigboye, told reporters he disputes roughly 95 percent of the government’s account, specifically challenging whether the agents properly identified themselves, whether Bamigboye had any reason to believe the men approaching him were law enforcement rather than a threat, and whether his actions under those circumstances can be framed as criminal resistance.
Riach noted that his client “may be the first criminal in history to call 911 during the commission of his alleged crime.” Federal public defender Jean Brandl, who represents Frazier, offered a different framing entirely. “She literally went to the police station,” Brandl said, “because an unidentified white man was in her car and she didn’t know what he was doing there.”
Frazier’s identity added a dimension to the case that no legal brief could contain. She is the sister of Darnella Frazier, then 17 years old when she filmed the police killing of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street in May 2020. That footage, taken on a phone by a teenager on her way to a corner store, became the evidentiary foundation for the murder conviction of Derek Chauvin and altered the public reckoning with police violence in the United States.Five years later, her sister was in federal court, charged with trapping a law enforcement officer in a vehicle, arguing that she had driven to the nearest police station because she was afraid.
Bamigboye called 911 from the back seat of a moving Jeep, convinced he was being abducted. The federal agent in the front seat yelled into the same phone network at the same moment, equally convinced. Both, by every available account, were terrified. Defense attorney Riach disputes 95 percent of the government’s version of those five minutes. Both sides agree on the destination.
What the law makes of the rest is now before a federal court.
