An American citizen was held in a Florida jail cell on ICE’s orders after he was charged under a new, restrictive immigration law criminalizing “unauthorized alien” entry into the state. He was kept imprisoned even after presenting his birth certificate.
According to a report from the Florida Phoenix, 20-year-old Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez was arrested on Wednesday during a traffic stop. The arresting officer claimed in his report that Gomez-Lopez was in the country illegally and took him into custody.
He was charged under a Florida law that went into effect in February, making it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants to enter the state knowingly. Gomez-Lopez's charge came despite a federal judge ruling the law unconstitutional earlier this month.
Lopez -Gomez's mother brought his birth certificate and Social Security card to a Leon County courthouse, and the charge was dropped. Judge LaShawn Riggans agreed that Lopez-Gomez had sufficient proof of citizenship to drop the charges, but said she did not have the authority to release him from an ICE hold.
“He hasn’t committed a crime for them to hold him, that’s what I don’t understand,” Gomez-Lopez’s mother, Sebastiana Gomez-Perez, told the Phoenix. She was in court for her son’s hearing on Thursday, but was reportedly denied access to visit him in Leon County Jail. “I felt immense helplessness because I couldn’t do anything, and I am desperate to get my son out of there.”
An ICE detainer issued by the Tampa Homeland Security Investigations office mandates that he be held for 48 hours. He was released on Thursday evening, with reporters capturing the emotional moment the young man was reunited with his mother.
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