U.S.-born American citizen under #ICE hold in #Florida after driving from #Georgia

#JuanCarlosLopezGomez 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.'

By Suzanne Gamboa, April 17, 2025

"A U.S.-born American citizen was being detained at the request of immigration authorities Thursday despite an advocate showing his U.S. birth certificate in court and a county judge finding no reason for him to be considered an 'illegal alien' who illegally entered Florida.

"Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, 20, was arrested Thursday evening by Florida Highway Patrol and charged under a state immigration law that has been temporarily blocked since early this month. Details of Gomez-Lopez’s arrest and detention were first reported by the Florida Phoenix news site.

"After inspecting his birth certificate, Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggans said during the hearing that 'this is indeed an authentic document,' but that she did not have jurisdiction beyond finding no probable cause for the charge.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s role is to enforce immigration laws that generally apply to noncitizens. American citizens are protected under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution from unreasonable search and seizure, arrest and detention.

"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.

"NBC News has reached out to state and federal authorities for comment.

"Lopez-Gomez was in a vehicle with other passengers and was traveling to work from Georgia when they were stopped after entering Florida.

:A sweeping immigration law signed by Gov. #RonDeSantis in 2023 makes it a state crime for an undocumented immigrant over age 18 to enter the state illegally."

Read more:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-born-citizen-detained-ice-immigration-florida-rcna201800?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Team Trump Is Gaming Out How to Ship #USCitizens to #ElSalvador

Trump officials are talking internally about #denaturalizing #AmericanCitizens — and potentially sending some to #ElSalvador

By Nikki McCann Ramirez, Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez - April 12, 2025

"Donald #Trump and his White House have moved to deport #GreenCard holders for espousing #ProPalestinian views, shipped hundreds of #migrants to a notorious #Salvadoran #MegaPrison without due process (in defiance of a judge’s order), and are now publicly musing about sending United States citizens to prison in El Salvador.

"Trump said last weekend he would 'love' to send American criminals there — and would even be 'honored' to, depending on 'what the law says.' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed this week that the president has discussed this idea privately, too, adding he would only do this 'if it’s legal.'

"El Salvador’s president, #Nayi Bukele, has for months been offering to hold U.S. citizens in his country’s prison system, which he has turned into 'a judicial black hole' rife with 'systematic #torture,' as one #HumanRights advocate recently told Rolling Stone.

"Legal experts agree that sending American citizens to prison in El Salvador would be flagrantly illegal under both U.S. and international law — and that the idea itself is shockingly #authoritarian, with few parallels in our nation’s history.

"The Trump administration is indeed discussing this idea behind the scenes, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Rolling Stone. In their most serious form, these conversations have revolved around attempting to denaturalize American citizens and deport them to other countries, including El Salvador.

" 'You can’t deport U.S. citizens. There’s no emergency exception, there’s no special wartime authority, there’s no secret clause. You just can’t deport citizens,' says Steve Vladeck, a legal commentator and law professor at Georgetown.

" 'Whatever grounds they try to come up with for denaturalization or #expatriation, the one thing that is absolutely undeniable is that people are entitled to individualized processes, before that process can be effectuated.'

"In the United States, the grounds to strip a naturalized individual of their citizenship encompass serious material offenses. They include: committing #treason or #terrorism, enlisting in a foreign military engaged in opposition to the United States, or lying in applications for citizenship or as part of the naturalization process."

Read more:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-el-salvador-us-citizens-denaturalization-1235315975/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/xliRd

From #Wikipedia: Internment of Japanese Americans

"During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority (#WRA), mostly in the western interior of the country. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens.

"These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066, issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, following the outbreak of war with the Empire of Japan in December 1941. About 127,000 Japanese Americans then lived in the continental U.S., of which about 112,000 lived on the West Coast. About 80,000 were Nisei ('second generation'; American-born Japanese with #USCitizenship) and Sansei ('third generation', the children of Nisei). The rest were Issei ('first generation') immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated.

"#Internment was intended to mitigate a security risk which Japanese Americans were believed to pose. The scale of the incarceration in proportion to the size of the Japanese American population far surpassed similar measures undertaken against German and Italian Americans who numbered in the millions and of whom some thousands were interned, most of these non-citizens. Following the executive order, the entire West Coast was designated a military exclusion area, and all Japanese Americans living there were taken to assembly centers before being sent to concentration camps in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Arkansas. Similar actions were taken against individuals of Japanese descent in Canada. Internees were prohibited from taking more than they could carry into the camps, and many were forced to sell some or all of their property, including their homes and businesses. At the camps, which were surrounded by barbed wire fences and patrolled by armed guards, internees often lived in overcrowded barracks with minimal furnishing."

[...]

Prior use of internment camps in the United States

"The United States Government had previously employed civilian internment policies in a variety of circumstances. During the 1830s, civilians of the indigenous #CherokeeNation were evicted from their homes and detained in 'emigration depots' in Alabama and Tennessee prior to the deportation to Oklahoma following the passage of the #IndianRemovalAct in 1830. Similar internment policies were carried out by U.S. territorial authorities against the #Dakota and #Navajo peoples during the American Indian Wars in the 1860s.

"In 1901, during the Philippine–American War, General J. Franklin Bell ordered the detainment of #Filipino civilians in the provinces of Batangas and Laguna into U.S. Army-run #ConcentrationCamps in order to prevent them from collaborating with #Filipino General Miguel Malvar's guerrillas; over 11,000 people died in the camps from malnutrition and disease."

Read more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
#ICEDetention #IllegalDeportations #SecretPolice #HumanRightsViolations #ConstitutionalRights #HumanRights #SCOTUSIsCompromised #SCOTUSIsCorrupt #USPol #ForcedDisappearances #MemoryHoled #1798AlienEnemiesAct #PrivatePrisons

#SupremeCourt Allows #Trump to Use 1798 Wartime Law to #Deport People

The nation's highest court backed Trump's use of the #AlienEnemiesAct to speed up #deportations

by Charisma Madarang, April 8, 2025

"The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a massive win on Monday, voting 5-4 to allow his administration to continue rapidly deporting alleged gang members using the Alien Enemies Act.
The law, passed in 1798, gives presidents the authority to remove foreign nationals over the age of 14 from countries where the United States is either engaged in a declared war or subject to “invasion or predatory incursion” by their country of origin. The act has been invoked three times in U.S. history, each time during wartime, and is meant to counter the actions of foreign governments and regimes, not alleged criminals, gangs, or non-state actors. The law was also used to justify Japanese internment during WWII, and now, the Trump administration is using it to justify its deportations.
In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court tossed a district court decision that had temporarily blocked President Trump’s attempt to continue using the 227-year-old law after he sent almost 300 Venezuelan migrants to a notorious prison in #ElSalvador, known for human rights abuses.

"All nine justices agreed, however, that anyone the administration is seeking to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must receive notice of deportation and be given the opportunity to challenge the removal through '#habeas petitions' — meaning that migrants have the right to have their detention or deportation reviewed by the federal court, but only for themselves and in the area where they are being detained.

"The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the ruling, while Justice #AmyConeyBarrett, who was appointed by Trump, partially dissented. Barrett joined Justice #SoniaSotomayor’s dissent calling the majority’s legal conclusion 'suspect' and questioning if habeas claims should be the only way to contest deportations under the act.

"'The Court’s legal conclusion is suspect,' wrote #Sotomayor. 'The Court intervenes anyway, granting the Government extraordinary relief and vacating the District Court’s order on that basis alone.'"

Read more:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/supreme-court-ruling-alien-enemies-act-1798-trump-1235312485/

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/BJSoh
#ICEDetention #IllegalDeportations #SecretPolice #HumanRightsViolations #ConstitutionalRights #HumanRights #SCOTUSIsCompromised #SCOTUSIsCorrupt #USPol #ForcedDisappearances #MemoryHoled #1798AlienEnemiesAct

"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth."
- #GeorgeOrwell, 1984
#OrwellQuotes #NineteenEightyFour #BigBrother #MemoryHole #Erased #MemoryHoled #USPol #Fascism #Authoritarianism #AuthoritarianRule