A U.S.-born citizen was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Florida on Thursday night, even though a judge confirmed his birth certificate was legitimate and found no reason to treat him as an “illegal alien.”
Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez, 20, was driving from Georgia to work when he was stopped by the Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law temporarily blocked earlier this month. The details of his arrest were first reported by the Florida Phoenix.
In court, Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans reviewed Gomez-Lopez’s birth certificate and declared, “This is indeed an authentic document.” Despite this, the judge said she had no authority to do more than confirm there was no probable cause for the charges.
Gomez-Lopez, born in Georgia, had spent most of his life in Mexico. His first language is Tzotzil, a Mayan language. He was traveling with other passengers when the group was stopped after entering Florida.
Florida’s immigration law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2023, makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants over 18 to enter the state illegally. However, Gomez-Lopez is a U.S. citizen and should not have been treated as an undocumented immigrant.
Even after the judge’s ruling, Gomez-Lopez remains in custody at ICE’s request. Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, attended the hearing and told reporters: “Everything tracks for him being sent to an ICE detention center.”
The arrest has sparked outrage, especially from Gomez-Lopez’s mother, who broke down in tears when she saw her son on video during the hearing. She told the Florida Phoenix, “I felt immense helplessness because I couldn’t do anything, and I am desperate to get my son out of there.”
Kennedy compared the situation to Franz Kafka’s The Trial, a novel about a man defending himself against unknown charges. “It’s like this bureaucratic, dystopian nightmare of poorly written laws,” Kennedy said. “We are living in a time when this man could get sent to El Salvador because, what, is he going to be treated like a stateless person?”
Kennedy was referring to the hundreds of immigrants sent to a prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration after being accused of gang affiliation under the wartime Alien Enemies Act. Families and lawyers have had little to no contact with them since.
