normally minor offenses like speeding,<\/a> driving with a busted taillight or driving without a license. Those lead to police discovering the immigrant\u2019s ICE warrant, and they then book the person into jail, jump-starting the path to deportation.<\/p>\nA.G.\u2019s case is different.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were at his apartment complex; they knew where he lived,\u201d she said. \u201cI have not seen that happen yet, where they actually go to somebody\u2019s apartment and they\u2019re staking him out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ericka Gomez-Tejeda, the director of community organizing at Hope CommUnity Center, which works with immigrants, said the case was also the first they were aware of ICE making a street-level arrest in Central Florida. Such tactics have been more common in Democratic-led states such as California, Illinois, Oregon and Minnesota where there have been ICE \u201csurges\u201d independent of local law enforcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been our biggest fear \u2014 that they\u2019re going to go for the lowest hanging fruit of folks who are vulnerable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The ICE agent drove A.G. to the agency\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations office on Delegates Drive in south Orlando, where they replaced his handcuffs with shackles.<\/p>\n
He was interviewed and quizzed on his own history, as well as his family\u2019s and his girlfriend\u2019s. They asked him about the worst crime he\u2019d seen committed since he\u2019d been in the U.S., and how the notorious Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua operated, which puzzled him since he\u2019s never had any connection. They had him remove his clothes to check for tattoos that they could trace to gang lineage.<\/p>\n
He said he was in shock as he sat in a room with other detainees for most of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have my work permit, I have my social security number, I pay my taxes, I go to college, I work, I don\u2019t have a criminal record. I\u2019ve never been pulled over, because I drive like an old man,\u201d he said. \u201cI was doing everything right.\u201d<\/p>\n
But after several hours, a Department of Homeland Security investigator told him he was being detained and sent to the Krome North Service Processing Center immigration facility in Miami-Dade County. He arrived around midnight.<\/p>\n
There, he said, he was placed in a pod of 58 detainees in what was classified as a high-security area, with people accused of violent felonies or drug dealing. He requested to be moved to a lower-security section, but that did not happen.<\/p>\n
Guards advised him to keep a low profile.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was with people that had (charges of) battery with deadly weapon, grand theft, domestic violence, cocaine,\u201d he said. \u201cI told them many times, \u2018I\u2019m a college student, why do I have to be here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the lights were always on, bedtime was 11 p.m. and guards were shouting to wake them up at 6 a.m. He was scared of being attacked at night and called his girlfriend, V.S., several times daily.<\/p>\n
She is a U.S. citizen and said she was tasked with coordinating his affairs, trying to pay their rent and car payments as he missed work \u2014 while also worrying about A.G.\u2019s wellbeing. She also asked to be identified only by her initials to help protect A.G.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we tried to coordinate for him to call me at 3:00 or at 6:00 \u2014 and if he wouldn\u2019t call me then \u2014 I\u2019m like, my God, did something happen?\u201d she said. \u201cYou just don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The day of his arrest, an emergency habeas corpus petition was filed by The Arroyo Law Firm in federal court in Orlando. It contended his detainment violated the Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments and that he should be released. The firm has secured the release of more than two dozen people detained using similar arguments.<\/p>\n
Six days later, Judge Paul Byron ordered A.G..\u2019s release without a hearing. A.G. learned of his release hours later.<\/p>\n
That day, he was freed from the Miami-Dade facility to find his way back to Central Florida. V.S. ordered him an Uber to the Brightline Station, and he took a train back north.<\/p>\n
Immigration authorities held onto all of his documents \u2014 a frustration shared by numerous detainees and their attorneys in recent months \u2014 including his driver\u2019s license and work permit. Now, he needs a ride to and from work and class. Attorneys filed a motion to get them back, but so far, he doesn\u2019t have them.<\/p>\n
The saga has left him shaken, even as he\u2019s returned to work. He\u2019s found himself in tears and had a panic attack. At night, he wakes up every hour, fearful of being attacked, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so heartbroken because I love this country,\u201d he said. \u201cI came to the US seeking freedom. In my country, you get killed because you think differently. Or you go to jail for 15 years because you\u2019re a domestic terrorist \u2014 that\u2019s what they call you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my country, they were looking for me because of my political beliefs, and now in the U.S., they\u2019re looking for me because of my status. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with my status.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just before sunrise on a Tuesday in March, A.G., a Valencia College student, got into his car outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3758,605,697,273,4014,3458,95],"class_list":["post-5991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-valencia","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-social","tag-valencia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}