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

By Carma Hassan, CNN

(CNN) — A US-born man initially charged 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 by Florida Highway Patrol on Wednesday when the car he was riding in was pulled over for a traffic stop, said 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.

The new Florida law that Lopez-Gomez was arrested under – designed to discourage undocumented immigrants from entering the state and touted by its Republican leaders – had been temporarily blocked by a judge, according to news reports and a spokesperson for the immigrant rights coalition working with Lopez-Gomez’s family.

A state judge later found no probable cause for the charge of crossing into Florida illegally, but she said didn’t have jurisdiction to release Lopez-Gomez because of the ICE hold, court records show.

It was not immediately clear why Lopez-Gomez may have been the subject of an immigration detainer, with which ICE asks 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 Department of Homeland Security, 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, 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, of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, posted on X with a photo of an emotional Georgia man surrounded by supporters.

The White House’s mass deportation campaign has sparked concerns over racial profiling and immigrants’ rights as it aims to vastly slow arrivals at the border and eject undocumented immigrants, from children to suspected criminals. Judges across federal and state courts have weighed the legality of a mounting number of such cases, while President Donald Trump also has threatened to send certain US citizens to offshore prisons, a notion experts say has no legal basis.

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.

ICE detention officers told Lopez-Gomez’s relatives he would be released Thursday evening, Akbar said.

The Department of Homeland Security is looking into the incident, its spokesperson said. ICE, the Florida Highway Patrol and the Leon County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

Florida’s SB 4-C 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 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. So, they’re right now unlawfully holding a US citizen,” Greer said.

“They’ve dismissed the underlying criminal charges, so the only reason they’re holding him is because ICE sent a piece of paper over that says, ‘Please hold this person for us. We’ll come pick him up later.’”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Lex Harvey contributed to this report.