Danish Mississippi man freed from ICE custody

Release is good news for Kasper Eriksen and his family, yet highlights the plight of other immigrants who remain incarcerated and face deportation

Kasper Juul Eriksen, a 32-year-old Danish national who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during his final citizenship interview in April was recently released on bond after nearly four months in detention.

“He was let out on bond last Tuesday,” Angela Hobart Garner, Eriksen’s mother-in-law, told The Mississippi Independent.

Eriksen, a father of five who has lived in Mississippi since 2013, was being held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana. His release came a week before the birth of his fifth child, according to social media posts shared by family members.

Eriksen is not a typical ICE target. He is a Trump supporter who blamed former President Joe Biden for his arrest. His wife, Savannah Eriksen, said her husband will be able to reapply for U.S. citizenship in the future, according to a report by Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. His bond was set at $7,500, the newspaper noted.

In an Aug. 3 update on the family’s GoFundMe page, Savannah Eriksen wrote that her husband had been assigned a new judge after three previous judges were fired, illustrating the chaotic nature of the Trump administration’s immigrant roundup. The Eriksen family’s GoFundMe campaign, created to offset legal expenses, has raised nearly $64,000.

Eriksen’s detention stemmed from an incident in 2015, when he failed to submit Form I-751, a “Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence,” after complications with his wife’s pregnancy and a stillbirth. Immigration law requires the form to be filed within 90 days of a conditional green card expiring, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Failure to do so can result in deportation proceedings. However, late filings are often accepted with proof of extenuating circumstances.

Eriksen has maintained that he did not receive a 2019 removal order issued during the Trump administration. Despite that, the conservative MAGA-supporting Danish immigrant blamed the Biden administration for his current woes.

“The reason I’m sitting here is more or less a product of the Biden administration,” he told Ekstra Bladet in June, arguing that immigration authorities allowed his naturalization process to move forward without flagging the earlier issues.

Federal officials have said that Eriksen is to blame for his arrest. “Kasper Eriksen, a Danish national, is in our country illegally,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek in May 2025. “He failed to show up for his immigration hearing on April 2, 2019. He has a final order of removal from an immigration judge. This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”

Eriksen’s case highlights the expanding scope of immigration enforcement during Trump’s second term. Since January 2025, the number of people arrested by ICE has more than tripled, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, from 14,557 in January to 44,811 in early August. Overall, detentions by the Department of Homeland Security, which include ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are at just under 60,000. Around 70 percent of those detained have no convictions, TRAC has noted.

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Image: Kasper Eriksen (GoFundMe page)