U.S.-born citizen held by ICE in Florida jail regardless of delivery certificates offered in courtroom | EUROtoday

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 delivery certificates and Social Security info to a decide in courtroom.

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was taken to Leon County Jail after a visitors cease and charged with illegally coming into the state as an “unauthorized alien” below a state legislation that has been quickly blocked from enforcement by a federal decide.

The cost was dropped, however Leon County Judge 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 line with courtroom data. The Florida Phoenix first reported the arrest.

“The Constitution provides guardrails to protect due process and prevent unlawful arrests,” American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Florida authorized fellow and immigrants’ rights legal professional Amy Godshall stated in a press release to The Independent.

His detention was “based on a patently false allegation that he entered the state while undocumented,” she stated. “All this despite his mother appearing in court with his Social Security card and his birth certificate showing his place of birth as the United States.”

Lopez-Gomez was finally launched on Thursday night.

He was touring from Georgia when he was stopped by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. Governor Ron DeSantis’s sweeping anti-immigration legislation, signed in 2023, makes it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant to enter the state with out authorized permission.

That legislation was blocked two weeks in the past, “meaning that law enforcement cannot make arrests under its blocked provisions. Full stop,” Godshall stated.

“U.S. citizens should not be detained by ICE, yet they are continuing 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 line with the Florida Phoenix.

His mom burst into tears when she noticed her son nearly at his courtroom listening to on Thursday, the outlet reported.

“I felt immense helplessness because I couldn’t do anything, and I am desperate to get my son out of there,” she stated.

The Independent 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 brokers into communities throughout the nation and summarily eliminated dozens of immigrants.

Thursday’s courtroom listening to got here as a federal appeals courtroom 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 today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” Appellate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote. “And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”

A federal decide in Florida is contemplating whether or not to difficulty a preliminary injunction to additional block Florida’s legislation, which makes it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants over age 18 to “knowingly” enter the state “after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.”

“The Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda and Florida’s anti-immigrant law can only be implemented by abandoning the fundamental principle of due process,” Godshall stated. “We are seeing this in real-time. And it is coming at the cost of lives and the rule of law.”