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. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper arrested Lopez-Gomez after a...
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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.”
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A Florida Highway Patrol trooper arrested Lopez-Gomez after a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.
The 20-year-old is set to remain in jail for the next 48 hours, waiting for federal immigration officials to pick him up despite his first-degree misdemeanor charge being dropped.
Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans held Lopez-Gomez’s birth certificate up to the light after community advocate Silvia Alba silently waved the document in the courtroom.
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.
ICE also requested that the Georgia jail hold Lopez-Gomez, but he won release after his family showed officials his birth certificate and Social Security card, Gomez-Perez said.
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.
At issue is a recently passed law that a federal judge has
temporarily barred the state from enforcing, further calling into question the validity of his arrest, the charge, and detention.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed SB 4-C into law on Feb. 14, and U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams blocked its enforcement on April 4.
The law makes it a misdemeanor for undocumented immigrants over age 18 to “knowingly” enter Florida “after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.”