By Gisela Salomon
Miami (AP) – An American citizen was arrested in Florida for having allegedly been in the country illegally and detained for the collection by the immigration authorities even after his mother showed a judge the birth certificate of his son and the judge rejected the charges. The man was released after his case received general coverage.
Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, 20, was in a car that was arrested just after the Georgia border by Florida Highway Patrol on Wednesday, said Thomas Kennedy, spokesperson for Florida Immigrant Coalition. Gomez and other members of the car were arrested under a new Florida law which is pending which makes it a crime for the people who are illegally to enter the state.
We do not know if Lopez Gomez has shown documents proving that he is a citizen of the officers who stop. He was detained in Leon County prison.
The accusation of illegal entry into Florida was abandoned Thursday after his mother showed to the judge that his state identification card, his birth certificate and his social security card, said Kennedy, who attended the hearing. Judicial files show that Judge Lashawn Riggans found no basis for the accusation.
Lopez Gomez remained briefly in detention after us, immigration and customs application, asked him to stay there for 48 hours, a common practice when the agency wants to take care of someone. Ice did not respond to a request for comments.
The case attracted great attention because the ice is not supposed to take custody of citizens born in the United States. Although the immigration agency can sometimes be involved in cases of naturalized citizens who have committed offenses such as lies on immigration forms, it has no authority over people born in the United States, which added to the confusion is that a federal judge had put a grip on the application of the law of Florida against the people who are in the country illegally entering the state, which meant that This should not have been imposed.
“No one should be arrested under this law, not to mention an American citizen,” said Alana Greer, an immigration lawyer of Florida Immigrant Coalition. “They saw this person, he did not speak in particular English, and they therefore arrested him and accused him of this law that no one (should) be accused.”
The journalist of Associated Press Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
