US-born citizen accused of entering Florida as 'unauthorized alien' finally freed

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez held his mother in a tight embrace and wept following his release from the Leon County Jail Thursday evening, where the U.S. citizen was held after his arrest for illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien.”

An official with Homeland Security Investigations in Tallahassee took Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old born in Georgia, to a Wendy’s near the jail, where he reunited with his mother after spending more than 24 hours under arrest following a traffic stop in which he was a passenger.

Lopez-Gomez appeared shellshocked and spoke quietly as he discussed what happened when a Florida Highway Patrol trooper pulled over the car he was in on his way to work from Cairo, Georgia, to Tallahassee. The trooper made the traffic stop because the driver was going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone, according to the arrest report.

“I feel fine leaving that place, I felt bad in there. They didn’t give us anything to eat all day yesterday,” he told the Florida Phoenix in Spanish. He added that he had asked the trooper who made the arrest why he was being taken into custody, because he was a U.S. citizen.

His mother, also in Spanish, said the days ahead will be tough for the family and worries that Lopez-Gomez and his sisters will live in fear of deportation despite having been born in the country. She told the Phoenix she planned to sue over her son’s arrest.

“I don’t have a way to pay all the people who are helping us. People from other states have called us, and we don’t have a way to pay them; we can only thank them,” Gomez-Perez said.

The pair didn’t reunite until the evening, after Lopez-Gomez’s first court appearance earlier in the day. Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans ruled Thursday morning that she lacked jurisdiction to release him because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had formally asked the jail to hold him for 48 hours.

After Riggans’ inspection of his Social Security card and birth certificate, which an advocate waved in the courtroom, the judge said she found no probable cause for the charge.

“In looking at it, and feeling it, and holding it up to the light, the court can clearly see the watermark to show that this is indeed an authentic document,” Riggans said.

The arrest record the trooper filed states that Lopez-Gomez had said he was in the country illegally but that he had handed over his ID. There was no mention of the Social Security card on the arrest report. However, Lopez-Gomez told the Phoenix he had shown the trooper a copy of his Social Security card and Georgia state ID.

The HSI agent who took Lopez-Gomez to Wendy’s directed questions to a spokesperson, who didn’t respond to the Phoenix’s request for comment or questions as of this publication.

After the reunion with his mom, Lopez-Gomez returned to the parking lot of the jail, where 30 protesters had been demanding his release. They met him with cheers and hugs.

Lopez-Gomez will have to return to the Leon County Courthouse on May 6. He was charged under 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.”

Two other men who were in the car with Lopez-Gomez, the driver and another passenger, also made their first appearances on the same charge on Thursday. The driver was also charged with driving without a license.