Last year, 29-year-old Kimberly Hall was arrested at O’Hare International Airport with 21 bundles of cocaine after traveling from Mexico, according to court records, in a case that was splashed across her hometown British tabloids.
Now, as the United Kingdom citizen faces felony drug charges, she is entangled in an immigration-related fight with the state’s attorney’s office as she seeks release from the Cook County Jail while awaiting trial.
Prosecutors say that, while initially released on electronic monitoring, she sought out federal immigration authorities in an attempt to get deported and evade trial. She was very nearly able to pull it off, according to prosecutors.
Her attorney, though, in court documents countered that she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after simply asking questions about how to obtain authorization to find work. In a recently-filed request for her release, her attorney argued that a Cook County judge improperly detained her, reasoning that the Trump administration is “wildly unpredictable.”
“It’s abnormal. That’s what caused this whole fiasco,” said Hall’s attorney, Brandon Carter, of ICE’s attempt to deport Hall. “From my understanding, the prosecution was barely able to keep her here.”
The unusual dispute will next week go before a judge, who will hear arguments about whether Hall should remain jailed.
Hall’s trouble started when she flew from Cancún, Mexico to the United Kingdom with a connection through O’Hare, court records say. She was arrested on Aug. 19 while trying to clear customs.
Customs officers searched her bag and found the bundles, weighing around 43 kilograms, or nearly 100 pounds, according to court documents. It had an estimated street value of around $6.2 million.
Hall, who gave an address in a town in Northern England, admitted she agreed to deliver the bags to someone in Manchester, the documents say.
Carter said Hall was under duress when she was caught with the bags, having been threatened with violence after meeting some “shady figures” in Mexico.
“Kimberly is obviously a very small fish in a grander scheme of things,” he said.
Prosecutors sought to keep her jailed, arguing in a petition that she is a flight risk as a foreigner with no connection to Cook County.
A Cook County judge, though, denied the petition and instead ordered her to electronic monitoring and to surrender her passport.
In September, a grand jury returned an indictment that charged her with two serious class X felonies, controlled substance trafficking and possession with intent to deliver.
Then, in February, the state’s attorney’s office filed an emergency motion to get the case on the judge’s calendar.
In the motion, prosecutors said Hall was taken into ICE custody and was scheduled for deportation.
Asking a judge again to jail Hall, prosecutors said that while on electronic monitoring, Hall “presented herself to Immigration and Customs intending to be removed to the United Kingdom to avoid prosecution.”
This time, a judge ordered her detained.
In the order granting the detention petition, Judge Michael McHale wrote that Hall was “almost successful in her attempt” and had a departure flight scheduled before authorities alerted immigration.
But last week, Hall’s attorney filed a motion asking for her to be released, arguing that she did not seek out immigration authorities with the intent to be expelled from the country. Instead, the motion said, she was looking for information about obtaining employment.
“The kiosk official saw the electronic monitoring device on Ms. Hall and assumed it was from ICE and instructed her to go to their office in the same building,” the motion said. “When she spoke to an ICE official she was arrested and placed in custody.”
Usually, Carter said, defendants with pending cases that encounter immigration authorities will be put on an immigration hold so that the immigration issue can be handled after the case is resolved.
Officials obtained a writ from the Department of Homeland Security that said the government will no longer try to deport Hall while she has a pending case, the motion said.
The motion argues that the judge didn’t detain Hall because she was dangerous or a flight risk, but rather because of the unpredictability of the current administration on immigration matters.
“In this city there are thousands of undocumented people, some of whom have pending criminal cases but they get pretrial release,” he said. “So if you want to use that logic, anybody who has questionable immigration status with a pending criminal case can be denied pretrial release. I think that’s definitely improper.”
The parties will argue the motion on May 16.