Mid-commute traffic stop left US citizen detained under an ICE order. Then, a Florida judge verified his US birth certificate

A US-born man charged this week with being an “unauthorized alien” in Florida has been released after spending the night in jail on a 48-hour hold requested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the Trump administration’s broad deportation crackdown. Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, was arrested Wednesday by Florida Highway Patrol when the car he was riding in was pulled over for speeding, according to an arrest affidavit and his attorney, Mutaqee Akbar. The American citizen – born in Grady County, Georgia, where he lives in the city of Cairo – was crossing into Florida for his work in construction in Tallahassee, about 45 minutes from home. Uncertainty stemming from a language barrier or even customs paperwork Lopez-Gomez filled out as a teen may be factors in the Florida detention, his attorney and advocate told CNN as they try to understand what happened. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told CNN Lopez-Gomez was detained because he said he was in the US illegally, but Lopez-Gomez’s attorney said his client never said that. “After a stop by a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper, a dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S. was detained after he said that he was in the U.S. ILLEGALLY. Immediately after learning the individual was a United State citizen, he was released,” the official said. “When individuals admit to committing a crime, like entering the country illegally, they will of course be detained while officers investigate.” Still, the case highlights concerns over racial profiling and immigrants’ rights as the White House aims to vastly slow arrivals at the border and eject undocumented immigrants, from children to suspected criminals, and judges weigh the legality of a mounting number of such cases. “I think it shows the danger of the rhetoric,” Akbar said of Lopez-Gomez’s case. “We can be hard on immigration and want to protect the borders without profiling people because that is what this is: racial profiling.” Lopez-Gomez, who speaks an indigenous language and is not fluent in English or Spanish, was arrested with two men under a Florida law that took effect in February and was temporarily blocked April 4 by a federal judge, who barred its enforcement until Friday, court records show. It was not immediately clear why the suspended law was in play. During a hearing on Friday, the judge extended the restriction until April 29, according to Miriam Haskell, the director of litigation at the Community Justice Project, which represents the plaintiffs who are challenging the law. The judge also ordered another hearing on the matter, Haskell added. The law touted by Florida’s Republican leaders was designed to discourage undocumented immigrants from entering the state, then blocked after plaintiffs argued it violates a constitutional provision that makes immigration enforcement a federal responsibility. The state judge in Lopez-Gomez’s case this week verified his US birth certificate and found no probable cause for charging him with crossing into Florida illegally, court records show, but said she didn’t have jurisdiction to release him because of an ICE hold, Akbar said. It appears the immigration detainer was applied to Lopez-Gomez as part of the traffic stop. “ICE stated they will place a detainer on both subjects,” reads a Leon County arrest affidavit Akbar gave to CNN. ICE uses the provision to ask law enforcement agencies to notify it “before releasing a removable alien” and to “hold the alien for up to 48 hours” to give its umbrella agency, the Homeland Security Department, time to take the migrant into custody. While “no US citizen is a proper subject of a detainer, … many US citizens have been the mistaken subject of ICE detainers and even prolonged detention and removal, despite their assertion of citizenship,” according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a non-profit working on such issues since 1979. Lopez-Gomez was released Thursday evening, Florida Immigrant Coalition spokesperson Thomas Kennedy, who was at the Leon County courthouse to assist Lopez-Gomez’s family, told CNN. “He is free!! Thank you to everyone who shared, call(ed) and did anything to help secure his release,” Kennedy posted on X with a photo of the emotional Georgia man surrounded by supporters. “The Leon County Sheriff’s Office complies with ICE detainer requests as part of our intake procedures. This practice has been in place for several years and is consistent with standard procedures followed by many detention facilities across the country,” spokesman Javonni Hampton told CNN, noting the agency “does not determine citizenship status or initiate immigration holds.” ICE and officials in Grady County, Georgia, did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment. ‘This is indeed an authentic document’ Lopez-Gomez appeared virtually earlier Thursday before Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans, who was handed a copy of his birth certificate brought by Lopez-Gomez’s mother, Sebastiana Perez. “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, according to the non-profit news outlet Florida Phoenix, whose reporter was in court for the hearing and first reported the story. Lopez-Gomez was arrested Wednesday on a charge aligned with the blocked state law and listed in the arrest affidavit as “unauthorized alien enter Florida.” “I … asked if the driver and passengers if they were here illegally, and they stated yes and had ever been contacted by US Border Patrol or immigration (sic) Customs Enforcement (ICE),” the arresting officer wrote. One of the men had a Georgia ID, the affidavit states, without saying who. “Mr. Lopez-Gomez was a passenger in a vehicle pulled over for speeding and made a statement to a Florida State Trooper that he was not legally authorized to be in the United States. There was also a federal detainer issued for him,” the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which oversees the highway patrol, told CNN in a statement Friday. “He was transported to the Leon County Jail. Florida Highway Patrol will continue to work willingly with our federal partners to engage in interior enforcement of immigration law.” However, Lopez-Gomez never said he was “here illegally,” his lawyer told CNN. “The trooper talked to the driver, who said he was not here legally and did not have a license. The report claims that both passengers said they were not here legally, but it does not quote Mr. Lopez-Gomez,” Akbar said Friday. “The detainer sheet … claims that biometrics indicated he was not a citizen, which is also not true,” he said. “Best case scenario, this was a communication breakdown. But that is ‘best case,’ and there is profiling at play here, no doubt.” Lopez-Gomes might appear in government records as an undocumented person because of paperwork he filled out when he was 16, said Yolanda Alonso, a community activist helping his family. At age 2, he moved to Mexico, then returned at 16, she said. He didn’t have a passport but was allowed back into the US because he had his Social Security number and a US birth certificate, Alonso said. But he also filed a Form I-94, intended for visitors when they enter and leave the US, she said. ICE hold under scrutiny from advocates The law in question, Florida’s SB 4-C and 811.102– .103, penalizes illegal immigrants over the age of 18 “who knowingly enter or attempt to enter this state after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers.” The bill was signed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in February and temporarily blocked this month by US Judge Kathleen Williams, the Tallahassee Democrat reported. “It’s a series of horrors,” said attorney Alana Greer, director and co-founder of the Community Justice Project, which represents the Florida Immigrant Coalition but not Lopez-Gomez. “No one should have been arrested under this law, let alone a US citizen.” “The judge, the prosecutor, the sheriff and the jail are basically all throwing their hands up and saying, ‘ICE told us to hold him, so we’re going to keep holding him,’ even though no one disagrees with the fact that he’s a citizen,” Greer said. Lopez-Gomez’s case is “a prime example of why everyone should care, because if it happens to Mr. Lopez-Gomez, a US-born citizen, it can happen to anyone: Haitian Americans, Jamaican Americans, Venezuelan Americans,” Akbar said, “really any American, anyone born in America who has an accent could be at risk.” This story has been updated with additional information.