A U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement officer falsely claimed he had a warrant in an attempt to “de-escalate” after a crowd of angry onlookers gathered to protest an increasingly physical arrest of a Honduran man in a Baltimore County strip mall in June, federal prosecutors detailed in a court filing this week.

The filing — an affidavit in support of charging the man with resisting or assaulting a federal officer — provides new details of the circumstances leading up to the June 6 arrest, which at the time led some to question the role local police played in assisting the federal officers.

Last week, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland announced that the arrestee — Adolfo Nimrod Hernandez-Ramos — was being prosecuted, in a press release titled “Two Illegal Aliens Charged With Assaulting Immigration Officers.” The press release also included details on another arrest in Wicomico County.

But the affidavit, filed Wednesday, paints a more nuanced picture. Drawing from body camera footage, the federal agent who wrote the document describes how Hernandez-Ramos “fought back,” struggled, resisted and made threats, but does not describe him physically assaulting the officers, who are not named in the filing.

The affidavit states that both ICE officers “suffered several injuries” including a bruised knee, injured right ankle/Achilles, and lacerations to their arms and hands, which it attributes to “the entirety of his [Ramos-Hernandez’s] actions.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Maryland declined to comment on whether what was described constituted an assault, despite the heading of the press release. The spokesperson also declined to comment on whether it was standard procedure for an ICE officer to falsely claim they had a warrant in an attempt to de-escalate an agitated crowd.

Gabriela Lemus, executive director of Maryland Latinos Unidos, described the details in the affidavit as troubling.

“Unfortunately, on the surface, it could reaffirm the belief that ICE agents are acting in bad faith,” said Lemus, whose organization supports Latino and immigrant communities. “The question is, is this behavior dictated by a general policy of ‘do whatever it takes to bring in the individual in question’ or did the ICE agents in Baltimore [County] simply go rogue?”

In theory, federal officers should have specific rules of engagement for how they treat people suspected of violating the law, Lemus said.

“Having said that, I’ve witnessed some pretty dehumanizing behavior over the years,” she added.

A spokesperson for ICE said the agency would review the affidavit and could not immediately comment on it. Defense attorney information for Hernandez-Ramos was not yet available as of Thursday.

The Maryland charges came at the tail-end of a week that was in part marked by a felony assault charge filed against a former U.S. Department of Justice employee who threw a sandwich at a U.S. Customers and Border Protection agent deployed in Washington, D.C.

Identified in a ‘target packet’

On June 6, two ICE officers were surveilling a residential area in Catonsville for someone who was under a final order of removal to leave the country, according to the affidavit.

Weeks earlier, the officers had been prepped with a “target packet,” which included the name, photo and “driver authorization ID number” of another person — Adolfo Nimrod Hernandez-Ramos.

Hernandez-Ramos did not have a removal order, but was suspected of being undocumented and lived on the same block, according to the filing, which describes him as a Honduran national who illegally entered the United States but does not list any other criminal history.

While the officers were looking for their intended target, they observed Hernandez-Ramos leaving his home and followed him to a nearby clothing store, the filing said.

After Hernandez-Ramos parked his car, the officers — who were wearing ballistic vests with “HSI” emblazoned on them — approached him, and he began to run, the affidavit said, noting that the officers were also equipped with body cameras. The affidavit says Hernandez-Ramos pulled his arm away from an officer and ran inside the Ross department store, where he immediately fell to the ground.

“As officers attempted to handcuff Hernandez-Ramos, they repeatedly told him he was under arrest and ordered him to put his hands behind his back,” the affidavit states. “Hernandez-Ramos refused to comply, tensed his body, and began to struggle and attempt to wrestle away from the officers.”

Hernandez-Ramos questioned why he was being arrested, the affidavit continued, and a “crowd of onlookers started to form, encouraging Hernandez-Ramos to resist.”

“Attempting to de-escalate the situation, one of the officers indicated that he had a ‘warrant’ in the car,” the affidavit states. “However, there was no actual warrant for Hernandez-Ramos’ arrest.”

Responding to the officer, Hernandez-Ramos said, “So ... so! Show me the warrant,” the affidavit said, noting that he was again told to cooperate, to which he responded, “Why would I want to cooperate for what? I don’t want to cooperate with you!”

Hernandez-Ramos kicked at the officers, “continued to flail his arms about, grabbed a table, and clinched his arms together to prevent his arrest,” all of which is depicted in the body camera footage, according to the affidavit.

The filing says the footage also shows officers securing one handcuff on Hernandez-Ramos but struggling to get his other hand cuffed.

“At one point, Hernandez-Ramos grabbed the open cuff and told an officer, ‘I’m going to slice your eye out,’” the filing said.

The affidavit also accuses Hernandez-Ramos of attempting to head butt one of the officers on his way out of the store.

Halle Blitzstein, an associate attorney at the Baltimore-based Griffith Immigration Law, said there is a common misconception that ICE always needs a judicial warrant to make an arrest.

In reality, ICE officers have authority to arrest individuals without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe that person is in the country unlawfully.

“That’s exactly what we’re seeing play out in courtrooms across the country,” she said. “Our clients are routinely being arrested without warrants, simply for being undocumented — without any allegation of criminal conduct or threat to public safety."

Adam Crandell, another local immigration attorney, said that ICE officers “virtually never” have arrest warrants in advance of their encounters.

“Typically, the arrest warrant will be issued after the arrest has been conducted as part of their usual processing for removal proceedings,” Crandell said.

Crandell said he fears that method of federal immigration officers using the “reason to believe” standard as part of their warrantless arrest authority can lend itself to racial profiling.

Unlike in a criminal proceeding, where a bad arrest or illegal discovery of evidence may be subject to challenge in court, there is no such enforcement mechanism in immigration proceedings, Crandell added.

“There are literally no legal consequences to ICE or DHS for a bad or warrantless arrest,” Crandell added.

The help of local police

It was only after Baltimore County Police Department officers arrived that Hernandez-Ramos was “eventually taken into custody,” the affidavit said.

Jyoti Mohan, a Democratic activist in Baltimore County, has been closely following the agency’s involvement in the arrest, pressuring the police department to provide more detail on the incident.

Mohan believes that the responding Baltimore County officers violated the county’s prohibition on assisting federal immigration enforcement. She said the details of the incident, as laid out in the affidavit, provide more reason to question the actions of federal immigration agents.

“This is what ICE has been doing,” she said. “At this point, God forbid, if I were to have an encounter with somebody, I would not take their word for it that they are ICE, no matter what proof they gave me.”

A spokesperson for the Baltimore County Police Department said that the officers responding to the scene “observed a male subject commit an assault in their presence which prompted the officers to intervene in order to prevent an escalation of the incident.”

“Despite their presence, the subject continued to be non-compliant,” said Joy Stewart, the department’s spokesperson.

Stewart said the department reviewed the incident and determined that no policies were violated.

“The officers conducted themselves in a professional manner consistent with the standards and expectations of the department,” she said.

Lemus, the advocate, said that state and local officials need to “make some very clear decisions about how they will engage and gain some transparency from the administration in Washington about their intentions.”

She described the recent wave of federal immigration enforcement in Maryland as “representative of a federal agency takeover of local communities.”

“Since there is no transparency in the processes or in the logic, it places everyone’s public safety at risk, which is key here,” Lemus said. “Public distrust of law enforcement will likely erode.”