Two former Logan Justice Court clerks face federal charges for allegedly helping an immigrant who was sought by federal agents to evade detention.
Jennifer Joma, left in the photo on the left, and Lauren Morrow, right, are charged in federal court with allegedly helping an immigrant evade detention by federal immigration authorities on April 9.
Two former Logan Justice Court clerks face federal charges for allegedly helping an immigrant evade detention. Lauren Morrow and Jennifer Joma allegedly helped the immigrant evade arrest on April 9 by an ICE agent. Both women were working when they learned an ICE agent was in the justice court building, spurring their alleged efforts.
SALT LAKE CITY — Two former Logan Justice Court employees are facing federal charges for allegedly helping an immigrant sought by Immigration and Customs Enforcement evade authorities and sneak out of the court facility.
"This case is about some state court clerks who abused their position of trust and took the law into their own hands by helping an illegal alien evade a lawful arrest by ICE," read court documents in the two cases. Federal officials filed charges against Lauren Kelsey Morrow, 26, and Jennifer Joma, 27, in U.S. District Court on June 3 and they were unsealed Tuesday.
Both women face charges of conspiracy to transport and harbor illegal aliens, harboring illegal aliens, and obstruction of U.S. Department of Homeland Security proceedings. Joma faces a fourth count of transporting illegal aliens. The alleged incident occurred on April 9 at the Logan Justice Court building, where both women worked as clerks, when an ICE agent appeared to arrest a suspected immigrant in the country illegally who had business that day in court.
Word spread among court staff about the agent's presence, according to court documents, and Morrow and Joma began scouring online court records to determine who the agent was seeking. Ultimately, they identified three non-U.S. citizens, including the person sought by the ICE agent, and helped them sneak out of the building through a maintenance door, out of sight of the ICE agent and other court staffers, court documents state. Joma allegedly drove them away from the site.
Others in the courthouse allegedly helped, according to court papers, but only Joma and Morrow are named.
"Acting as self-appointed anti-ICE vigilantes, Lauren Morrow, her co-defendant Joma and others took it upon themselves to obstruct immigration proceedings and the lawful enforcement of United States immigration laws," read court documents. Whatever the women's "personal feelings regarding immigration policies or laws, this was a crime.
" After the incident, Logan officials announced the two women involved had resigned, though they didn't identify them. In a press release Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Utah said the women were spotted on a courthouse video camera while allegedly helping the immigrants.
After leading one of the immigrants out of the courthouse, "Morrow and Joma were spotted on a surveillance camera waving and smiling at it, and Morrow used her middle finger in an obscene gesture at the camera," reads the press release. Jennifer Joma and Lauren Morrow are charged in federal court with allegedly helping an immigrant evade detention by federal immigration authorities on April 9, 2026. They are pictured in surveillance footage captured during the alleged effort.
Both women were booked into the Salt Lake County Jail on Tuesday and both were scheduled to be arraigned in federal court on Thursday. Federal officials aren't seeking their detention, but listed several conditions for their release, including the surrender of their passports. Joma's brother, William Joma, said his sister was detained by federal officials on Tuesday in Logan after she had dropped her daughter off at a daycare center.
He said he had to scramble to figure out what had happened and that he's taking time off work to contend with the situation.
"I've been on big brother mode trying to find where my sister was being held at and understand the situation to get her out, home to her family and to protect from alleged federal charges that will harm her career," he said. "Their alleged actions, if true, could have been motivated by nothing more than compassion and a desire to help someone in need, and now they are facing serious consequences for allegedly trying to do the right thing.
This is all allegedly," reads the GoFundMe account. *KSL.com does not assure that the money deposited into the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisers and otherwise proceed at your own risk. The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team.
The article, itself, is solely human-written. Police identify woman who fell, died after climbing tree in MoabTim Vandenack covers immigration, multicultural issues and Northern Utah for KSL. He worked several years for the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and has lived and reported in Mexico, Chile and along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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