UPDATE: Thursday, Apr 17, 2025 · 11:55:28 PM +00:00 · CathyM
Latest update — he’s been released! Maybe pressure from the press and public helped.
UPDATE: Hit the mainstream (h/t Vega):
www.nbcnews.com/…
U.S.-born American citizen under ICE hold in Florida after driving from Georgia
Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez is being held even though a county judge found his birth certificate “authentic” and said there wasn’t reason to consider him an “illegal alien.”
...
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s role is to enforce immigration laws that generally apply to noncitizens. American citizens are protected under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution from unreasonable search and seizure, arrest and detention.
Nonetheless, he remains detained locally at ICE’s request, said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson at the Florida Immigrant Coalition who attended Thursday’s hearing.
“Everything tracks for him being sent to an ICE detention center,” he told NBC News in a phone interview.
NBC News has reached out to state and federal authorities for comment.
Let’s hope holding their feet to the fire will work.
UPDATE: Thursday, Apr 17, 2025 · 10:07:16 PM +00:00 · CathyM
Here’s another kidnapping — story from AP:
apnews.com/…
ICE agents smashed car window and seized Guatemalan man who’s seeking asylum, family says
A Massachusetts family is demanding answers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, complaining its agents smashed a car window with a hammer and detained Juan Francisco Mendez, who they claim had applied for asylum. (AP video: Rodrique Ngowi)
THIS really was a violent arrest!! There is NO need to do this unless someone is violent!
Okay — they’ve done it: grabbed a citizen and REFUSE to let him go, despite proof IN COURT that he was born in the US!!
https://www.rawstory.com/us-born-man-held-for-ice-under-floridas-new-anti-immigration-law/
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, was being held in the Leon County Jail Thursday, charged with illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien” — even as a supporter waved his U.S. birth certificate in court.
The man, who was arrested Wednesday after a traffic stop in which he was a passenger on his way to his job in Tallahassee, is set to remain in jail for the next 48 hours, waiting for federal immigration officials to pick him up, even though Leon County authorities dropped his first-degree misdemeanor charge.
His mother, Sebastiana Gomez-Perez, burst into tears at the sight of her son, who appeared virtually for his first hearing at the Leon County Courthouse. She left the courtroom distraught because she could do nothing to help her son, who was born and lives in Grady County, Georgia.
.. Based on her inspection of his birth certificate and Social Security card, Riggans said she found no probable cause for the charge. However, the state prosecutor insisted the court lacked jurisdiction over Lopez-Gomez’s release because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had formally asked the jail to hold him.
“This court does not have any jurisdiction other than what I’ve already done,” Riggans said.
To say the court can’t force his release IS INSANE!! This is where we have to draw the line, folks! They can grab ANYONE now… and not give them back.
