A Maryland federal judge on Thursday ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to free a 25-year-old woman who was detained after her disgruntled ex-boss filed charges against her over $12.08 in state court.

Nayeli, whose Kafkaesque journey through the legal system was covered by The Brew last month, has been released from the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia, her family confirmed. (The Brew is not using her full name to protect her privacy.)

ICE arrested Nayeli on September 29 at the Carroll County District Court building, just minutes before a hearing on charges filed by her former boss, Rasheed Haroon. Under Maryland’s district court commissioner system, anyone can file criminal charges – a system that has been widely criticized as easy to abuse.

A Carroll County prosecutor dropped the charges when Nayeli failed to appear for the hearing because she had been arrested by ICE.

Nayeli spent more than a month in custody after ICE claimed that her detention was mandatory under the Laken Riley Act, which required detention for immigrants accused, but not convicted, of theft and other low-level crimes.

In a 19-page opinion ordering Nayeli’s release, Chief U.S. District Judge George L. Russell III criticized ICE for relying on dismissed charges that were filed by Nayeli’s ex-boss rather than law enforcement.

“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 farther, saying, “It is entirely possible that the only unlawful act that may have been committed here is that of malicious prosecution by Rasheed Haroon,” suggesting that Nayeli has cause to file a lawsuit herself.

Following Asylum Process

Originally from Honduras, Nayeli and her mother entered the U.S. without proper travel documents in 2017, when Nayeli was 16 years old. She and her mother were briefly detained at the time and then released into the country under the first Trump administration.

Since then, they have applied for asylum, a process that shields them from deportation while immigration judges consider their case. Their applications were denied in July 2025, but their case is still pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Nayeli is authorized to work in the U.S., she and her mother said. Nayeli worked for her ex-boss, Haroon, for about four years at his A to Z Auto repair shop near Sykesville. She quit the job in June after the 55-year-old business owner made her uncomfortable by asking for hugs at work, she previously told The Brew.

Nayeli quit in June, she previously told The Brew, after the business owner made her uncomfortable by asking for hugs at work.

Later that month, Nayeli filed a petition for a peace order against Haroon. She wrote that he had repeatedly called and texted her to demand a one-on-one meeting, showed up to her house uninvited and followed her in her car all the way to her parents’ house. He also canceled her last paycheck for $1,650, according to screenshots reviewed by The Brew, and dangled the money to try and force Nayeli to talk to him, she said.

At a June 22 court hearing on the peace order petition, Judge Erin M. Danz decided there wasn’t 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. “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 accidentally used the company card that was still loaded into her McDonald’s app, she said. Haroon showed up at her mother’s work the next day to demand the money back, and her mother paid him right away, according to screenshots reviewed by The Brew.

Haroon said, “I want to be nice with you and finish this nice because for me it’s easy to call ICE’”  – Nayeli’s mother, Sury.

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

Haroon then went to the police to try and get criminal charges filed over the $12.08. The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office investigated and did not file charges, but deputies let Haroon know that he could file the charges himself using Maryland’s district court commissioner system.

That system lets anyone file charges through a court commissioner, who does not investigate whether the charges are true. (Court commissioners also don’t need to be lawyers.) As a result, innocent people can end up arrested or entangled in the criminal justice system simply because a person with a grudge filed charges against them.

Haroon filed charges against Nayeli on July 27. District Court Commissioner Eric Miller signed off on misdemeanors of theft of less than $100 and unauthorized use of a credit card.

Nayeli learned of the charges when she was served with a summons. She was not arrested, as ICE claimed in a previous statement to The Brew.

ICE Arrest at Courthouse

Nayeli was set to address the charges at the court hearing on September 29.

Before the hearing, Carroll County prosecutor Mitchell “Craig” 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.

(Nayeli’s lawyer, Kate DeNobile, objected that 10 hours of community service seemed excessive for $12.08 that was immediately paid back. DeNobile also informed Wolf that Nayeli was “terrified” to appear in court because of Haroon’s ICE threats.)

On September 29, ahead of the court hearing on the charges, four plainclothes ICE officers approached Nayeli and her family while they sat on a bench outside the courtroom.

The officers did not identify themselves, Nayeli said, and asked her to come with them. Believing they were local police who wanted to talk about the theft case, she walked down the hall with them.

She realized they were ICE when they pulled her into a vestibule and began talking among themselves about how they should “do it here.” The officers handcuffed her and walked her out of the courthouse, according to video of the arrest obtained by The Brew.

Judge Erin Danz, who handled Nayeli’s criminal case just a few months after she oversaw the peace order petition, seemed unconcerned that a defendant had been arrested by ICE minutes before her court hearing.

“I don’t know what you want me to do about that,” Danz told DeNobile, according to the official courtroom audio recording of the hearing. “It’s not my hallway.” The charges against Nayeli were nolle prossed, or dismissed, at the hearing.

Who called ICE?

It’s not clear who alerted ICE to the hearing on September 29. Haroon previously told The Brew that he was not responsible for Nayeli’s arrest.

“She got arrested because she misused my card. Police told me to go file the charges,” he said.

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

Even after Nayeli was arrested by ICE, Wolf seemed open to pursuing additional charges against her based on Haroon’s say-so, according to emails reviewed by The Brew.

“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 in an email after Nayeli’s arrest. “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.

Lingering Worries

Nayeli and her family previously told The Brew that they are worried Haroon will try to file charges again, or will file them against her mother, who has similar legal status. He could do so because Maryland lawmakers failed to pass changes to the district court commissioner system during the last legislative session.

In Nayeli’s case, it was the Due Process Clause that offered her the greatest protection – and she still spent over a month in detention.

Russell, the federal judge who ordered Nayeli’s release, found that ICE does not have “limitless” power to detain people who have been released into the country on their own recognizance, as Nayeli was.

“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.’”

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