Baltimoronic Investigation

By: James Trusty

June 24, 2025, may mark the day that the criminal justice system for Baltimore, Maryland finally established its lunacy. If the allegations are correct, an employee of Pretrial Services committed what Maryland officials view as a cardinal sin—he or she let ICE know that there was an illegal alien coming to the office. Armed with that information, ICE showed up at the courthouse, was allowed up to the 4^th floor, and arrested an illegal alien. There are no allegations of disruption to the Pretrial Services office, no suggestion that the arrest caused a courthouse-wide panic, and no lawyers rushed to microphones to announce the alien had been tortured, beaten, and shipped off to a Salvadoran prison. But the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office and the Baltimore City Clerk of Court have triumphantly announced that the employee is being investigated for committing a crime.

Pretrial Services is a component of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (“DPSCS”). According to its website, “The program assesses criminal history, provides community supervision to defendants awaiting trial, and risk classification for bail review.”[1] All of those responsibilities require their evaluation of whether a defendant has ties to Baltimore, because residency is an important predictor of risk of flight. A defendant from Idaho, for example, may have different conditions of pretrial release than a Baltimore native. Similarly, a person who is illegally present in the U.S. poses a significantly greater risk of flight from prosecution than the guy who has spent his life within a mile of the courthouse. Enter the Maryland political, er criminal, justice system.

In announcing the investigation, Baltimore City Sheriff Sam Cogen proudly stated that it is “Our understanding…that Pretrial Services does not ask immigration questions,” and that the Sheriff’s Office probe was “not about politics” but whether the routine ICE arrest interfered with the “administration of justice.” Not to be outdone, the Clerk of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Xavier Conaway, hailed “Sherriff Cogen and his team for acting swiftly and decisively by opening a criminal probe” of the matter, before proclaiming that “Baltimore City will not compromise the right of a resident to access the court system free from intimidation or targeted enforcement.”  DPSCS, meanwhile, placed the employee on administrative leave “pending the outcome of the investigation.”

And then this rhetorical gem from Clerk Conaway:

“Courthouses must be places where every person – regardless of background or immigration status—feels safe seeking services or justice. When immigrant families are made to feel unsafe in a place meant for justice, we all lose. Our courts must be spaces of dignity, not fear. If our courthouses become places people avoid, then we’ve lost more than public trust—we’ve weakened the very foundation of equal justice in Baltimore City.”[2]

It is truly hard to know where to start with this misplaced virtue-signaling sentiment. Do we actually “all lose” when an illegal alien is fearful of entering a “place meant for justice?” Is the need for courthouse “dignity” so strong that we purposefully provide wildly inaccurate representations to the judges about bail? That is, of course, the inevitable consequence of shielding our eyes to immigration status in the context of pretrial release determinations. Shouldn’t the “forward-thinking”[3] sheriff be thinking about the negative consequences of enforcing the don’t ask/don’t tell policy of a sanctuary courthouse rather than criminalizing the courthouse employee’s call to ICE?

Maryland officials and politicians have perfected the art of hating ICE’s lawful effort to undo four years of open borders. In their thirst to stop federal law enforcement agents from doing their jobs, these hucksters have flipped justice on its head. A phone call from a courthouse employee to ICE is now viewed as a basis for a criminal investigation, and the caller is already put in the humiliating position of forced administrative leave. Pray tell, what is the crime? Aiding and abetting a federal agent doing its job? Conspiracy to Enforce Law? Obstruction of Injustice? Courthouses are one of the safest places to make arrests, as entering the building ensures that the arrestee is already separated from any weapons, handy escape routes or groups of nasty supporters. ICE, by the way, does this all the time, with notice to the courthouse security folks and with the Chief Judge’s ground rules (for example, no arrests in the actual courtrooms) firmly in place. With all due respect to the Maryland “safe space” promoting officials, its time to revisit the warped and punitive use of Baltimore’s law enforcement resources to go after a clerk who gave “dignity” and “trust” to ICE agents simply doing their job. Baltimore has enough real crime to investigate.

[1] https://www.dpscs.state.md.us/agencies/dpds.shtml

[2] https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/ice-arrest-baltimore-courthouse-sheriff-investigation

[3] https://baltimoresheriff.com/