A 20-year-old United States citizen was held in a Florida jail on the request of federal immigration authorities regardless of his mom exhibiting his beginning certificates and Social Safety data to a decide in court docket.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was taken to Leon County Jail after a site visitors cease and charged with illegally coming into the state as an “unauthorized alien” beneath a state regulation that has been briefly blocked from enforcement by a federal decide.
The cost was dropped, however Leon County Decide LaShawn Riggans claimed on Thursday that she didn’t have jurisdiction to launch him after Immigration and Customs Enforcement requested that he stay in detention, in accordance with court docket information. The Florida Phoenix first reported the arrest.
“The Structure gives guardrails to guard due course of and forestall illegal arrests,” American Civil Liberties Union Basis of Florida authorized fellow and immigrants’ rights legal professional Amy Godshall stated in a press release to The Impartial.
His detention was “based mostly on a patently false allegation that he entered the state whereas undocumented,” she stated. “All this regardless of his mom showing in court docket along with his Social Safety card and his beginning certificates exhibiting his hometown as the US.”
Lopez-Gomez was ultimately launched on Thursday night.
He was touring from Georgia when he was stopped by a Florida Freeway Patrol trooper. Governor Ron DeSantis’s sweeping anti-immigration regulation, signed in 2023, makes it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to enter the state with out authorized permission.
That regulation was blocked two weeks in the past, “which means that regulation enforcement can not make arrests beneath its blocked provisions. Full cease,” Godshall stated.
“U.S. residents shouldn’t be detained by ICE, but they’re persevering with to get swept up in these racially motivated raids and collateral arrests,” she stated.
Lopez-Gomez’s first language is Tzotzil, a Mayan language, in accordance with the Florida Phoenix.
His mom burst into tears when she noticed her son just about at his court docket listening to on Thursday, the outlet reported.
“I felt immense helplessness as a result of I couldn’t do something, and I’m determined to get my son out of there,” she stated.
The Impartial has requested remark from ICE.

The arrest and ongoing detention of an American-born citizen follows Donald Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda that has deployed federal agents into communities throughout the nation and summarily removed dozens of immigrants.
Thursday’s court hearing came as a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. issued a blistering ruling that rejected the president’s try to dam a lower-court ruling instructing the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported Salvadoran father now imprisoned in a infamous jail in his dwelling nation.
“If at the moment the Govt claims the proper to deport with out due course of and in disregard of court docket orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it’s going to not deport Americans after which disclaim duty to deliver them dwelling?” Appellate Decide J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote. “And what assurance shall there be that the Govt won’t practice its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”
A federal decide in Florida is contemplating whether or not to subject a preliminary injunction to additional block Florida’s regulation, which makes it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants over age 18 to “knowingly” enter the state “after coming into the US by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.”
“The Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and Florida’s anti-immigrant regulation can solely be applied by abandoning the basic precept of due course of,” Godshall stated. “We’re seeing this in real-time. And it’s coming at the price of lives and the rule of regulation.”
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