🔥 ICE Detention of American Citizens: The Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez Case and Trump's Dangerous New Border Policies

The case of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez reveals how easily citizenship rights can be violated in Trump's America

Apr 18, 2025

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
👧🏾✊🏾👦🏾

The government is making big mistakes by putting American citizens in jail just because they look or sound different. 😡 A young man named Juan Carlos was locked up even though he was born in Georgia and showed his birth certificate. 😢 This happened because of unfair laws that let police stop people who "look foreign."

🚔 President Trump is making things worse by saying maybe people born here could be forced to leave. 😤 This is very wrong and breaks our country's basic rules. ⚖️ People are fighting back by learning their rights, helping each other, and telling these stories so everyone knows what's happening. 💪🗣️

🗝️ Takeaways

🔒 U.S. citizen Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was detained as an "unauthorized alien" despite presenting his birth certificate and Social Security card, highlighting how citizenship protections are eroding
🧩 Laws using vague "reasonable suspicion" standards inevitably lead to racial profiling based on skin color, language, and cultural markers
🚫 While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs are being banned across the country, racist enforcement policies are flourishing
🗣️ Indigenous and Spanish-speaking citizens are particularly vulnerable to wrongful detention and deportation
🏛️ Trump's recent statements about potentially deporting U.S.-born citizens represent a direct challenge to 14th Amendment birthright citizenship protections
🤝 Community networks, legal support, and documentation of abuses are critical forms of resistance in this moment

Give a gift subscription

The Dangerous Path: ICE Detention of American Citizens in the New Trump Era

"La historia se repite, primero como tragedia, luego como farsa..."

The recent detention of Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen born in Georgia, has sent shockwaves through immigrant communities across the borderlands. Yet for those of us who have lived through decades of increasing border militarization, who have witnessed the steady criminalization of brown bodies in the Southwest, this development, while horrifying, comes as no surprise.

We stand at a precipice in American history. As I write this from my home in the borderlands of Southern Arizona, I can feel the tension rising like heat from the desert floor.

The machinery of deportation is no longer satisfied with targeting undocumented immigrants; it now reaches for U.S. citizens, particularly those whose language, skin color, or cultural background mark them as "foreign" in the eyes of enforcement agencies.

The Case That Broke Through the Noise

Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez was traveling from Georgia to Florida for his construction job when he was stopped in a routine traffic incident. Despite presenting his authentic birth certificate and Social Security card proving his citizenship, he was charged as an "unauthorized alien" for allegedly entering Florida without inspection.

Let's pause on that for a moment. A U.S. citizen, born in Grady County, Georgia, was accused of illegally entering a U.S. state. The charge was eventually dropped after a judge found no probable cause, but Lopez-Gomez remained detained due to a 48-hour ICE hold that local authorities claimed they couldn't override.

What made Lopez-Gomez vulnerable? He speaks Tzotzil, a Mayan language, and has limited English proficiency. In the eyes of Florida authorities operating under the state's controversial immigration law, SB 4-C, these characteristics were apparently enough to dismiss his citizenship documents and brand him an "illegal."

Qué conveniente es olvidar que estas tierras eran indígenas mucho antes de que existieran sus fronteras arbitrarias.

A History of Targeting Citizens

This is not an isolated incident. For years, advocates have documented cases of U.S. citizens detained or deported by immigration authorities:

Between 2007 and 2015, over 1,500 U.S. citizens were detained by ICE
In 2018, a Dallas-born U.S. citizen, Francisco Erwin Galicia, spent three weeks in ICE custody despite having a Texas ID
In 2019, a Marine veteran born in Michigan, Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, was detained by ICE for three days
In 2020, U.S. citizen Guadalupe Plascencia was detained by ICE in San Bernardino, California

The patterns are clear: citizens with Hispanic names, Indigenous heritage, or limited English proficiency are disproportionately targeted. When documentation is presented, it is often treated with suspicion or outright dismissed.

The Legal Framework Enabling Citizen Detention

How did we arrive at a place where American citizens can be detained as "unauthorized aliens"? The groundwork was laid years ago with laws like Arizona's notorious SB 1070, which introduced the concept of "reasonable suspicion" as a basis for questioning immigration status.

What constitutes "reasonable suspicion" that someone is undocumented?

The law doesn't specify, creating a dangerous vacuum that is inevitably filled by racial, linguistic, and cultural profiling. Despite multiple court challenges that struck down parts of SB 1070, its toxic legacy lives on in policies across the country.

Florida's SB 4-C, signed into law in 2023, goes even further. It criminalizes transporting undocumented individuals into the state, requires hospitals to collect immigration status information, and invalidates identification documents from other countries. It was under this law that Lopez-Gomez was detained, even though a judge had temporarily blocked parts of the law before his arrest.

La ironía es espesa como el lodo después de la lluvia—the very people whose ancestors have the longest history on this continent are now treated as the most foreign.

The Trump Administration's Escalation

The previous Trump administration (2017-2021) implemented over 400 executive actions targeting immigrants. In his second term, Trump has signaled an even more aggressive approach. His recent statement suggesting the possibility of deporting U.S.-born citizens represents a dangerous escalation, directly challenging the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship protections.

This isn't just rhetoric. We must take them at their word when politicians with power speak about stripping citizenship. History teaches us that authoritarians tell us exactly what they plan to do—the mistake is not believing them.

The machinery is already in place:

Expanded detention facilities across the Southwest
Increased funding for ICE and Border Patrol operations
A judicial system increasingly stacked with judges sympathetic to restrictive immigration policies
State laws that empower local law enforcement to act as immigration agents

The False Promise of "Reasonable Suspicion"

The concept of "reasonable suspicion" in immigration enforcement deserves particular scrutiny. Unlike other areas of law enforcement where reasonable suspicion must be tied to specific criminal activity, in immigration enforcement, it has become a thinly veiled excuse for racial profiling.

How does an officer determine who might be undocumented without considering physical appearance, accent, or language? The answer is simple: they cannot. This is why cases like Lopez-Gomez's happen—the system is designed to cast suspicion on anyone who appears "foreign," even when they present proof of citizenship.

The Attack on DEI While Racism Flourishes

There is a bitter irony in the timing of these developments. As state after state bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in education and government, claiming such initiatives are "divisive," we simultaneously see an increase in policies that explicitly target racial and ethnic minorities.

The message is clear: talking about racism is forbidden, but practicing it is encouraged. Universities can't teach about the history of discrimination, but law enforcement can use skin color as a basis for detention.

Nos quieren callados mientras nos persiguen. Quieren enterrar nuestra historia mientras repiten sus peores capítulos.

The Human Cost

Behind the legal analysis and political developments are real human lives. Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez lost time, wages, and endured the trauma of detention—all while being treated as a foreigner in the country of his birth. His family experienced the terror of uncertainty, not knowing when or if he would be released.

For every case that makes headlines, countless others suffer in silence. The chilling effect on immigrant communities and U.S. citizens of immigrant descent is profound:

People avoid seeking medical care out of fear of documentation requirements
Parents keep children home from school during immigration operations
Crimes go unreported as victims fear any contact with authorities
Citizens carry excessive documentation, living in constant readiness to prove their right to exist in their own country

The Path Forward

In the face of these challenges, resistance is not just an option but a necessity. As Indigenous peoples of these borderlands, we have survived centuries of attempts to remove us from our lands, erase our cultures, and deny our humanity. This moment calls for the same resilience.

Here's what we can do:

Know Your Rights: Everyone, regardless of immigration status, has constitutional protections. Learn what information you are and are not required to provide to law enforcement.
Document Everything: If you witness or experience profiling or unlawful detention, document every detail. Names, badge numbers, times, and locations can be crucial in legal challenges.
Build Community Networks: Establish rapid response networks in your community to alert others about checkpoints, raids, or other enforcement activities.
Support Legal Challenges: Organizations like the ACLU, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and local immigrant rights groups are fighting these policies in court.
Engage Politically: Vote, organize, and hold elected officials accountable for their positions on immigration and civil rights.
Amplify Stories: Share accounts of those affected. Breaking through the noise requires making these injustices visible.
Support Independent Media: Mainstream outlets often miss or misrepresent these stories. Independent journalists and platforms like Three Sonorans work to keep our communities informed about issues that directly affect us.

A Note of Hope

Despite the darkness of this moment, I find hope in our communities' resilience. Throughout history, Indigenous and immigrant communities have faced attempts at erasure and expulsion, yet we remain. Our cultures, our languages, and our presence on this land persist because of the courage and determination of generations before us.

The current administration's policies are not the end of our story—they are just another chapter in a long history of resistance. From the Bracero strikes to the Chicano Movement, from Standing Rock to today's immigrant rights organizing, our people have always stood up against injustice.

Nuestra resistencia es tan antigua como la opresión misma, y mucho más poderosa.

We will protect each other. We will fight in the courts, legislative chambers, communities, and public consciousness. And we will win because we must—not just for ourselves, but for the generations to come who deserve to live without fear in the land of their birth.

Supporting the Resistance

If these issues matter to you, I invite you to support Three Sonorans. As an independent media outlet based in the borderlands, we bring you the stories that mainstream sources ignore or distort. Your support enables us to continue documenting these struggles, amplifying community voices, and providing analysis that centers the experiences of Indigenous and immigrant communities.

Together, we can build a future in which citizenship is not questioned based on appearance, language, or heritage—where the promise of equal protection under the law is finally fulfilled for all.

La lucha sigue. Y seguiremos hasta que la justicia prevalezca.

What are your experiences with immigration enforcement in your community? Have you witnessed or experienced racial profiling that made you feel like a foreigner in your own country? Share your thoughts in the comments below.