ICE re-arrested Garrison Gibson at Minneapolis check-in, a day after judge ruled his battering-ram arrest unlawful

On January 16, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents re-arrested Garrison Gibson, a 37-year-old Liberian national, during what his attorney Marc Prokosch had been told was a routine check-in at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis. Gibson had been released from ICE custody the previous night after U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ordered his immediate release, ruling that agents' January 11 battering-ram entry into Gibson's Minneapolis home -- while his wife and 9-year-old child were inside -- violated the Fourth Amendment, and that ICE had separately violated its own regulations governing revocation of an order of supervision by never notifying Gibson why his release was being revoked or giving him the required prompt interview. At the check-in, Prokosch said the officer they met with initially said, "This looks good, I'll be right back," before roughly five agents returned and took Gibson into custody a second time; even the agents on scene appeared unaware of what was happening, with one asking Prokosch not to sue him.

Gibson fled Liberia's civil war as a child and had lived in the U.S. for two decades under an order of supervision tied to a 2009 removal order and a 2008 drug conviction the courts later dismissed. Judge Bryan's written findings state Gibson "has no criminal record" and had complied with every supervision condition, including ankle monitoring and check-ins as recently as December 29, 2025. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in an on-the-record statement, called Gibson a "criminal illegal alien" with a "lengthy rap sheet" including robbery and drug and weapons offenses, and described Judge Bryan as an "activist judge" obstructing enforcement -- a characterization the court's own order, based on the case record, directly contradicts, and which did not address the specific circumstances of the January 16 re-arrest.

ICE released Gibson again roughly three hours later that Friday afternoon, placing him back on an ankle monitor under his existing supervision terms. Two days later, on January 17, Judge Bryan issued an amended order adding a provision barring ICE from arresting or re-detaining Gibson "without first complying with all" regulations governing revocation of supervised release -- a restriction absent from his original January 15 order, added only after the unexplained January 16 re-arrest this entry records.

This is recorded as its own event, distinct from the January 11 arrest, because it is a separate enforcement decision on a separate day: ICE re-detained Gibson using the same unexplained, notice-free procedure a federal court had just ruled unlawful, at an appointment ICE itself had set. Taking someone back into custody without the notice or interview the government's own regulations require -- one day after a court found that identical omission made an earlier detention illegal -- is itself an unlawful detention and a denial of the due process immigration regulations are meant to guarantee, independent of whatever happens to the underlying removal case.

Updates

2026-03-03 — Government ordered to pay Gibson's attorney fees [8]

A federal judge ordered the government to pay Gibson's attorney more than $9,300 in fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act. FOX 9 identified at least 18 Operation Metro Surge habeas cases, totaling more than $106,000 in ordered fees, in which judges found the government's detentions were not "substantially justified."