A federal judge in Maryland has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to release a 25-year-old Honduran asylum seeker who spent more than a month in detention over a $12.08 theft complaint filed by her former employer — a complaint prosecutors dismissed at the first hearing. Chief U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III ordered Nayeli freed on Thursday, and her family confirmed she was released from the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia, according to reporting by Focal News drawing on the Baltimore Brew's investigation of the case.

Source: Focal News

In a 19-page opinion, Judge Russell sharply criticised ICE for building a detention on charges that no police officer or prosecutor had ever filed. “Important here is the fact that no prosecutor or law enforcement officer filed charges against (Nayeli); rather, her former employer, Rasheed Haroon, filed a Statement of Charges against her,” Russell wrote. “The fact that the State's Attorney immediately dismissed these charges only increases the likelihood that these charges were, in fact, meritless.”

The judge went further, writing that “it is entirely possible that the only unlawful act that may have been committed here is that of malicious prosecution by Rasheed Haroon” — a remark the reporting noted could open the way for Nayeli to pursue a lawsuit of her own. Haroon has denied responsibility for alerting ICE to her court hearing, and the allegations in her earlier peace-order petition against him were never finally adjudicated.

A $12.08 meal at the centre of the case

Nayeli worked for about four years at A to Z Auto, a repair shop near Sykesville, Maryland, owned by Haroon, 55. She quit in June, saying Haroon had made her uncomfortable by asking for hugs at work. Later that month, according to her peace-order petition, he repeatedly called and texted her demanding a one-on-one meeting, showed up at her house uninvited, followed her in his car to her parents' home, and withheld her final paycheck of $1,650 to try to force her to talk to him.

At a June 22 hearing on that petition, Judge Erin M. Danz found insufficient evidence to grant a final peace order, but warned Haroon in open court to stay away. “She doesn't want to have contact with you,” Danz said, according to a courtroom audio recording cited in the reporting. “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.”

A week later, Nayeli bought a meal at McDonald's for $12.08 and, she said, accidentally used a company card that was still loaded into her McDonald's app. Haroon showed up at her mother's workplace the next day to demand repayment, and her mother paid him immediately, according to screenshots reviewed by the Baltimore Brew. Her mother, Sury, recalled Haroon telling her: “I want to be nice with you and finish this nice because for me it's easy to call ICE.” Haroon has denied alerting ICE, saying, “She got arrested because she misused my card. Police told me to go file the charges.”

Haroon then went to the Carroll County Sheriff's Office, which investigated but did not file charges. Deputies told him he could file charges himself through Maryland's district court commissioner system, which allows any person to file criminal charges without an investigation into whether they are true, and whose commissioners do not need to be lawyers — a system the reporting noted has been widely criticised as easy to abuse. Haroon filed on July 27, and District Court Commissioner Eric Miller signed off on misdemeanours of theft of less than $100 and unauthorised use of a credit card. Nayeli learned of the charges when she was served with a summons; she was not arrested on them, contrary to what ICE later claimed, the reporting said.

Source: Eyes on ICE / Baltimore Brew reporting

Arrested in the hallway, minutes before her hearing

Before the September 29 hearing, Carroll County prosecutor Mitchell “Craig” Wolf offered to pause the case if Nayeli agreed not to use Haroon's card again and to perform 10 hours of community service. Her lawyer, Kate DeNobile, objected that the community service was excessive for a $12.08 charge that had already been repaid, and told Wolf that Nayeli was “terrified” to appear because of Haroon's ICE threats.

On the day of the hearing, four plainclothes ICE officers approached Nayeli and her family as they sat on a bench outside the courtroom at the Carroll County District Court building in Westminster. The officers did not identify themselves, Nayeli said, and asked her to come with them; believing they were local police wanting to discuss the theft case, she walked down the hall with them, realised they were ICE when they pulled her into a vestibule, and was handcuffed and walked out of the courthouse, according to video of the arrest. Inside the courtroom, Judge Danz appeared unconcerned that a defendant had been seized minutes earlier. “I don't know what you want me to do about that,” Danz told DeNobile, according to the audio recording. “It's not my hallway.” The charges were then dismissed.

Why the judge said the detention was unlawful

ICE had argued that detention was mandatory under the Laken Riley Act, the federal law requiring detention of immigrants accused — but not convicted — of theft and certain other low-level crimes. Judge Russell rejected that argument, finding that ICE does not have “limitless” power to detain people who, like Nayeli, had been released into the country on their own recognisance. “It is improper for (ICE) to rely on nolle prossed charges as evidence that a crime was committed,” Russell wrote. “It offends due process to assert that those same dismissed charges justify revocation of (Nayeli's) release on the stated basis that she conclusively 'committed a crime of theft.'”

Nayeli and her mother entered the United States without proper travel documents in 2017, when she was 16, according to the reporting. They were briefly detained and then released under the first Trump administration, and applied for asylum, a process that shields applicants from deportation while their case is pending. Their applications were denied in July 2025, but their case remains before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and Nayeli is authorised to work in the United States, according to her family.

What happens next

Nayeli and her family say they remain worried that Haroon will try to file charges again, or file them against her mother, who has a similar legal status — one reason the ruling matters beyond one family. Maryland lawmakers failed to pass changes to the district court commissioner system during the last legislative session, so the route by which a private employer filed these charges remains open. Her asylum fight also continues before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and Judge Russell's malicious-prosecution remark leaves open a possible civil claim, which has not been reported as filed. For immigrant workers across Maryland and Virginia — including Punjabi diaspora families whose members work in small shops, garages and trucking — the decision draws a clear line in the reporting: a dismissed, privately filed low-level charge cannot, on its own, be treated by ICE as proof that a crime was committed or as a basis to keep a released person locked up.