Nayeli walked into court in Westminster on September 29 holding a slim green folder, ready to finally resolve the criminal charges that had been hanging over her for two months.

Her former boss had filed the charges over a $12.08 transaction that appeared on a company credit card after Nayeli quit her job at his Carroll County auto repair shop.

The money, which Nayeli says was charged to the card by accident because she didn’t realize it was still active in her McDonald’s app, was paid back almost immediately, according to documents reviewed by The Brew.

But her ex-boss, Rasheed Haroon, still wanted his 25-year-old former employee punished.

So he went to the police, who did not bring charges, and then filed theft charges against Nayeli himself using Maryland’s “ridiculously problematic” district court commissioner system.

As ordered, Nayeli went on that September morning to the Carroll County District Court to address the charges.

While she and her parents sat on a bench outside the courtroom before the hearing, four plainclothes law enforcement officers approached and said they needed to talk to Nayeli.

Two were wearing hoodies. They did not identify themselves, Nayeli said in an interview.

Believing these were local police officers who wanted to talk about her case, she walked away with them. But when they pulled her into a vestibule and began talking among themselves about how they should “do it here,” she realized they were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. They were about to arrest her.

She cried out for her mom, still sitting down the hall.

“This happened so quickly,” Nayeli’s mother, Sury, said in an interview. “They don’t identify, they don’t provide an arresting order. They only said, ‘ICE, she needs to go with me.’”

The Brew agreed not to use the family’s full names because they fear retaliation for talking to the media about their case. Their account has been verified using court records and videos of the arrest obtained by The Brew.

Nayeli’s mother and stepfather watched helplessly as the agents handcuffed their daughter and marched her to an ICE vehicle. Back inside the courthouse, Nayeli’s lawyer frantically informed the judge that her client had been taken by ICE from the hallway outside the courtroom.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about that,” Associate Judge Erin M. Danz responded, according to the official courtroom audio recording of the hearing. “It’s not my hallway,” the judge added.

The theft charges were nolle prossed, or dismissed, because Nayeli couldn’t appear at the hearing. A Carroll County prosecutor, Mitchell “Craig” Wolf, had already offered to “stet” the case, meaning it likely wouldn’t have been prosecuted anyway.

But two weeks later, Nayeli is still sitting in an ICE detention center in Virginia.

A “targeted operation”

Nayeli has a pending asylum case and had permission to stay in the U.S. while her case was being processed, according to court documents.

ICE appears to be using the Laken Riley Act to justify her detention.

The law, which mandated detention for immigrants accused of theft and other low-level crimes, passed Congress last year with the help of dozens of Democratic lawmakers who crossed party lines. They included Rep. April McClain Delaney, who represents Western Maryland and parts of Frederick and Montgomery counties. (She later disavowed her vote.)

“I’m trying to be as positive as I can,” Nayeli told The Brew from detention. “But I mean, of course, this is not my home.”

In an emailed statement, ICE described Nayeli as a “criminal illegal alien from Honduras,” who was arrested during a “targeted operation in Westminster, Maryland.”

ICE further said, “Her criminal history includes an arrest and charge from the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office for theft on July 27, 2026.”

That statement is not accurate.

Nayeli was served with a summons and was not arrested, has no prior criminal record, and was not charged by the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office. ICE did not respond to followup questions.

ICE called Nayeli a “criminal illegal alien,” although she had no prior criminal record and her theft case was not likely to be prosecuted.

ICE also defended its choice to make the arrest at a public courthouse.

“The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense,” the agency said.

“It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be.” the statement continued. “It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons.”

Weak Maryland Laws

Democrats in Annapolis have made a lot of noise about protecting immigrants from the Trump administration’s radical mass deportation campaign, but the legislation they’ve passed has been largely toothless.

“Sensitive locations,” such as schools, churches and courthouses, were mostly shielded from civil immigration enforcement actions under the Biden administration.

The Trump administration revoked that policy, stoking fear in immigrant communities and prompting a response from Maryland state lawmakers.

The Maryland Values Act of 2025 did list courthouses as a “sensitive location” in need of greater protection from immigration enforcement, but did nothing to address ICE activity at courthouses.

This year state lawmakers passed another Maryland Values Act that required courthouses to “implement a policy which may consider” guidance issued by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office regarding ICE enforcement.

That guidance, recently updated, offers no information about ICE enforcement at courthouses. The guidance also acknowledges that the state has virtually no power to stop federal immigration enforcement.

It instead advises state employees not to allow ICE agents into nonpublic areas of sensitive locations without a warrant, offering extremely limited protection.

Democrats in Annapolis have made a lot of noise about protecting immigrants from Trump’s mass deportation campaign, but the legislation they’ve passed has been toothless.

Maryland’s district courts responded to the 2026 law by adding a single paragraph to their administrative regulations.

The paragraph advises that law enforcement officers intending to serve a warrant at a courthouse should present it to courthouse security and wait until court proceedings are finished before serving it. The regulation, which took effect October 1, says nothing about what to do if ICE officers don’t present a warrant.

The result of this mishmash of legislation and official guidance is widespread confusion in Maryland about where ICE can operate, and what protections are offered to immigrants under state law.

Nayeli’s lawyer, Kate DeNobile, believed that ICE enforcement was not permitted inside Maryland courthouses, only to learn that wasn’t true after her client was arrested.

She told The Brew that arrests like Nayeli’s will have a “chilling effect on the administration of justice and public safety generally.” Witnesses and victims of crime will fear coming to court if they are not protected from ICE enforcement there.

“People may not want to press criminal charges, they might not want to file for protective orders or otherwise report community safety concerns because they fear being picked up by immigration enforcement for doing so,” DeNobile said.

Nayeli’s Peace Order

Nayeli worked for Rasheed Haroon for about four years, cleaning cars and doing other odd jobs at his “A to Z Auto” repair shop near Sykesville. (She is authorized to work in the U.S., she and her mother said.)

Haroon let her use a company credit card to buy lunch and make other business purchases, according to his own statements in court papers. She considered him a nice man until he started making her uncomfortable.

Nayeli says that the 55-year-old business owner would say that he loved her like a daughter and kept asking for hugs at work. Nayeli eventually told him she didn’t want to hug. He asked her for a handshake instead, she recalled, and then held onto her hand so long that she had to tell him to stop.

In June, she decided to quit the job and texted Haroon to let him know she wouldn’t be coming in anymore.

According to a petition for a peace order that Nayeli filed against Haroon later that month, he repeatedly called and texted her to insist that they have a one-on-one meeting.

Three months before her arrest by ICE, Nayeli filed a peace order against Haroon saying his phone calls, texts and visits to her home were making her “increasingly uncomfortable.”

On one occasion, he showed up at Nayeli’s house uninvited and asked to use the bathroom. On another, according to Nayeli and her parents, he saw Nayeli driving, pulled a U-turn and tailgated her all the way to her parents’ house, where her stepfather had to intervene and tell Haroon that he could not force Nayeli to talk to him.

Nayeli said Haroon repeatedly dangled her last paycheck, which he had canceled so it couldn’t be cashed, to force her to talk with him. (The Brew reviewed a screenshot showing that a check for $1,650 had bounced.)

“I feel that I am being pressured to have a private conversation with him in order to resolve issues related to my pay, which has made me increasingly uncomfortable and concerned,” Nayeli wrote in her petition.

At a court hearing on the petition on June 22, Judge Danz said that there was not enough evidence to grant a final peace order, but she also warned Haroon to stay away from Nayeli.

“She doesn’t want to have contact with you,” Danz said, according to a courtroom audio recording of the hearing provided to The Brew by the district court. “If you continue to have contact, now that I have made that abundantly clear here in the courtroom, then you can come back and I will grant it at that point,” the judge added.

A week later, Nayeli bought a meal at McDonald’s for $12.08. She says she didn’t realize Haroon’s company card was still active in her McDonald’s app, which she had recently re-downloaded.

Haroon showed up at her mother’s work the next day to demand the money back. Nayeli’s mother, Sury, paid him immediately. The Brew reviewed a screenshot of the Zelle transaction.

“He told me, ‘I want to be nice with you and finish this nice, because for me, it’s easy to call ICE,’” Sury recalled.

Haroon has had his own financial troubles. In March, Judge Danz – the same judge who handled the peace order against Haroon and the charges against Nayeli – found that Haroon owed more than $20,000 in rent for the Woodbine Road property where his auto shop was then located.

That location is now listed online as permanently closed, and Haroon appears to have set up shop at a new address.

Court System Weaponized

Sury and her daughter both entered the U.S. in 2019 when Nayeli was 16 years old, according to court records.

They were released into the country while their removal cases were processed and applied for asylum. An immigration judge denied those applications in July 2025, but their case is still pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

After Sury paid him back, Haroon went to the police to try and get charges filed over the $12.08. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office investigated and did not file charges, but told Haroon he could file charges himself, according to body-worn camera footage obtained by The Brew.

Haroon did just that on July 27.

District Court Commissioner Eric Miller signed off on two misdemeanors: theft of less than $100 and unauthorized use of a credit card.

The district court commissioner system that allows anyone to file criminal charges has been widely criticized as easy to abuse.

Court commissioners, who do not need to be lawyers to hold the job, don’t investigate whether the charges are true, relying on the statement of facts provided by the person requesting the charges. The system has led to the arrests of innocent people and rarely punishes people who file false charges.

Maryland lawmakers had the chance to reform the commissioner system during the last legislative session, but the bill failed at the last minute.

The district court commissioner system, which allows anyone to file criminal charges, has been widely criticized as easy to abuse.

Nayeli and her family say that her boss weaponized Maryland’s legal system to punish her over a $12.08 purchase. And while Nayeli normally would have been able to address the charges in court, her immigration status and ICE’s decision to arrest her before the hearing made that impossible.

“She went there and showed her face in court to defend herself against these bogus charges, and they snatched her away moments before she would have stepped into the courtroom and got this dismissed,” Nayeli’s stepfather Michael said.

Who Tipped off ICE?

Wondering who may have alerted ICE to the September hearing, The Brew reached out to Haroon and to Carroll County Assistant State’s Attorney Wolf.

In a brief phone exchange, Haroon said he was not responsible for Nayeli’s arrest by ICE. “She got arrested because she misused my card. Police told me to go file the charges.”

He did not answer followup questions, sent via email, including whether he contacted ICE ahead of the court date.

Wolf also did not directly answer the question of how ICE was alerted. “I can’t tell you why ICE does what it does,” he told The Brew.

Before the September 29 hearing, Wolf had offered via email to stet, or pause, Nayeli’s case as long as she agreed not to use Haroon’s credit card again and to undergo 10 hours of community service.

DeNobile, Nayeli’s lawyer, objected that 10 hours of community service seemed “excessive” for $12.08 that was returned to Haroon before the charges were filed.

Wolf disagreed. “Yes, it wasn’t a lot of money and she paid the money back quickly, but she used the company credit card – after she was let go,” he wrote to DeNobile.

Haroon also told Wolf that Nayeli had made more unauthorized purchases with another company card, according to another email. “I told him that it appears she will be deported, but that if he finds out that she is released, he should contact us/police to investigate the additional potential misuses of his card,” Wolf wrote to DeNobile after Nayeli’s ICE arrest on September 29.

“Needless to say, if she is released and if she did make additional unauthorized purchases, we will seek to reinstate the case and potentially add charges,” he continued.

Wolf, who is assigned to Carroll County’s Special Victims Unit focusing on domestic violence, according to his LinkedIn profile, did not respond to emailed questions from The Brew about whether his office contacted ICE ahead of Nayeli’s hearing.

Nor did he say whether he had considered the dynamics between Nayeli and her ex-boss before proceeding with the theft charges.

DeNobile had emailed Wolf to let him know that Nayeli was “terrified” to appear in court because of Haroon’s ICE threats.

“She is very scared he will call immigration on her and she will be arrested at the courthouse,” DeNobile wrote on September 4.

Stuck in Limbo

Nayeli is now stuck in limbo at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia.

The food is terrible, she says, and there is no privacy to use the bathroom. The facility is full of people like her who have no criminal records, she adds.

Her fate is in the hands of Maryland’s chief federal judge, George L. Russell III, who is handling her pending petition for habeas corpus.

She hopes to get home to her little dog, Nico, and her new job at a car dealership. She had been saving money to study business at a community college.

She said she is especially frustrated that she never got to defend herself against the theft charge.

“They didn’t give me the chance to go fight in court. Anyone can just put charges against someone in an immigration process, and they can just arrest them without proving that they’re guilty or not.”

• Madeleine O’Neill is a freelance reporter in Baltimore.