A US citizen was held for pickup by ICE even after proving he was born in the country
It is unclear if Lopez Gomez showed documents proving he is a citizen to the arresting officersCourt records show Judge Lashawn Riggans found no basis for the chargeMIAMI, USA: A US citizen was arrested in Florida for allegedly being in the country illegally and held for pickup by immigration authorities even after his mother showed a judge her son's birth certificate and the judge dismissed charges.Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, 20, was in a car that was stopped just past the Georgia state line by the Florida Highway Patrol on Wednesday, said Thomas Kennedy, a spokesperson at the Florida Immigrant Coalition.Gomez and others in the car were arrested under a new Florida law, which is on hold, making it a crime for people who are in the country illegally to enter the state.It is unclear if Lopez Gomez showed documents proving he is a citizen to the arresting officers. He was held at Leon County Jail and released after his case received widespread media coverage.The charge of illegal entry into Florida was dropped Thursday after his mother showed the judge his state identification card, birth certificate and Social Security card, said Kennedy, who attended the hearing.Court records show Judge Lashawn Riggans found no basis for the charge.Lopez Gomez briefly remained in custody after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement requested he remain there for 48 hours, a common practice when the agency wants to take custody of someone. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.The case drew widespread attention because ICE is not supposed to take custody of US-born citizens. While the immigration agency can occasionally get involved in cases of naturalized citizens who committed offenses such as lying on immigration forms, it has no authority over people born in the USAdding to the confusion is a federal judge's ruling to put a hold on enforcement of the Florida law against people who are in the country illegally entering the state, which meant it should not have been enforced.'No one should be arrested under that law, let alone a US citizen,' said Alana Greer, an immigration attorney from the Florida Immigrant Coalition. 'They saw this person, he didn't speak English particularly well, and so they arrested him and charged him with this law that no one (should) be charged with.'
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Arab News
10 hours ago
- Arab News
US federal authorities arrest dozens for immigration violations across Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Federal immigration authorities arrested 44 people Friday across Los Angeles, prompting clashes outside at least one location as law enforcement threw flash bangs to try to disperse a crowd that had gathered to protest the detentions. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents executed search warrants at three locations, said Yasmeen Pitts O'Keefe, a spokesperson for Homeland Security Investigations. But immigration advocates said they were aware of arrests at seven locations, including two Home Depots, a warehouse in the fashion district and a doughnut shop, said Angelica Salas, executive director for the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. In the fashion district, agents served a search warrant at a business after they and a judge found there was probable cause the employer was using fictitious documents for some of its workers, US Attorney's Office spokesperson Ciaran McEvoy confirmed. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass said the activity was meant to 'sow terror.' Federal immigration authorities have been ramping up arrests across the country to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations. Todd Lyons, the head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defended his tactics earlier this week against criticism that authorities are being too heavy-handed. He has said ICE is averaging about 1,600 arrests per day and that the agency has arrested 'dangerous criminals.' Protests recently broke out after an immigration action at a restaurant in San Diego and in Minneapolis, when federal officials in tactical gear showed up in a Latino neighborhood for an operation they said was about a criminal case, not immigration. Dozens of protesters gathered Friday evening outside a federal detention center in Los Angeles where they believed those arrested had been taken, chanting 'set them free, let them stay!' Other protesters held signs that said 'ICE out of LA!' while others led chants and shouted from megaphones. Some scrawled graffiti on the building facade. Officers holding protective shields stood shoulder to shoulder to block an entrance. Some tossed tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Officers wearing helmets and holding batons then forced the protesters away from the building by forming a line and walking slowly down the street. 'Our community is under attack and is being terrorized. These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers, and this has to stop. Immigration enforcement that is terrorizing our families throughout this country and picking up our people that we love must stop now,' Salas, of CHIRLA, said at an earlier press conference while surrounded by a crowd holding signs protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Yliana Johansen-Mendez, chief program officer for the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said her organization was aware of one man who was already deported back to Mexico after being picked up at a Home Depot on Friday morning. The man's family contacted her organization and one of their attorneys was waiting for hours to speak to him inside the detention center, she said. Authorities later said he had already been removed, and the man later contacted his family to say he was back in Mexico. Videos from bystanders and television news crews captured people being walked across a Home Depot parking lot by federal agents as well as clashes that broke out at other detention sites. KTLA showed aerial footage of agents outside a clothing warehouse store in the fashion district leading detainees out of a building and toward two large white vans waiting in a parking lot. The hands of the detained individuals were tied behind their backs. The agents patted them down before loading them into the vans. The agents wore vests with the agency acronyms FBI, ICE and HSI. Armed agents used yellow police tape to keep crowds on the street and sidewalk away from the operations. Officers throw smoke bombs to disperse crowd Aerial footage of the same location broadcast by KABC-TV showed officers throwing smoke bombs or flash bangs on the street to disperse the people so they could drive away in SUVs, vans and military-style vehicles. The station showed one person running backward with their hands on the hood of a moving white SUV in an apparent attempt to block the vehicle. The person fell backward, landing flat on the ground. The SUV backed up, drove around the individual and sped off as others on the street threw objects at it. Immigrant-rights advocates used megaphones to speak to the workers, reminding them of their constitutional rights and instructing them not to sign anything or say anything to federal agents, the Los Angeles Times reported. Katia Garcia, 18, left school when she learned her father, 37-year-old Marco Garcia, may have been targeted. Katia Garcia, a US citizen, said her father is undocumented and has been in the US for 20 years. 'We never thought this would happen to us,' she told the Los Angeles Times. Pitts O'Keefe said in a statement that one additional person was arrested for obstruction. The California branch of the Service Employees International Union said its president was arrested while exercising his right to observe and document law enforcement activity.
Asharq Al-Awsat
a day ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Red Sea Marine Traffic Up 60% after Houthis Narrowed Targets
Red Sea marine traffic has increased by 60% to 36-37 ships a day since August 2024, but is still short of volumes seen before Yemen's Houthis began attacking ships in the region, according to the commander of the EU's Aspides naval mission. The number of merchant ships using the narrow Bab al-Mandab strait increased after missile and drone attacks by the Houthis slowed and the US and the extremist group signed a ceasefire deal, Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis said in an interview in Madrid. But shipping traffic, which reached a low of 20-23 ships daily in August last year, is still short of an average of 72-75 ships a day seen before the Houthis began attacks in the Red Sea in November in 2023 in support of Palestinians over Israel's war in Gaza, said Gryparis according to Reuters. The mission, which was established to safeguard navigation in the strategic trade route linking the Mediterranean with the Gulf of Asia through the Suez Canal, was extended in February when it was also tasked with tracking illegal arms shipments and monitoring vessels carrying sanctioned Russian oil. The last attack on a merchant ship took place in November 2024 and the Houthis have also narrowed their objectives, saying their targets are Israeli ships and ships that have a connection with Israel or have docked at an Israeli port, Gryparis said. "If you have a vessel that does not correspond to this criteria... there is a huge possibility - more than 99% - that you're not going to be targeted by the Houthis," Gryparis said. Still, Gryparis said he could not guarantee that merchant ships won't be attacked. Some companies have been deterred from using the route because of the mission's lack of ships, which can cause delays of as much as a week for those seeking to be escorted through the area, he said. He said the mission has between two and three ships operating at one time and has requested the EU provide it with 10 ships to increase its capacity for protection. The mission has provided close protection to 476 ships, shot down 18 drones, destroyed two remote-controlled boats used to attack ships and intercepted four ballistic missiles, he said.
Saudi Gazette
a day ago
- Saudi Gazette
Israeli military recovers two hostages' bodies in southern Gaza
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces have recovered the bodies of two Israeli-Americans taken back to Gaza as hostages during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, the Israeli military says. Judi Weinstein Haggai, 70, who was also a Canadian citizen, and her husband Gadi Haggai, 72, were murdered by gunmen from the Mujahideen Brigades group when they attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz, a statement said. Their bodies were found in the southern Khan Younis area of Gaza overnight and brought back to Israel for forensic identification. There are now 56 hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he and his wife sent their condolences to the families of Judi and Gadi Haggai. "Our hearts grieve over this terrible loss. May their memories be blessed," he added."I would like to thank, and express appreciation to, the fighters and commanders for this determined and successful operation. We will not rest, nor will we be silent, until we return home all of our hostages — the living and the deceased."The couple's families recalled how they "went out for a walk on the morning of that cursed Saturday and never returned"."We welcome the closure and their return to a proper burial at home, in Israel," they an English teacher, and Gadi Haggai, who used to work in Kibbutz Nir Oz's kitchen, were last seen alive in a video they shared with a group chat at the start of the 7 October attack. They were seen taking cover in a field as incoming rockets fired from Gaza streaked overhead and the sound of gunfire was later told friends and relatives they had been wounded, before ceasing couple's daughter Iris Weinstein Haggai said after the attack her mother had told her they had been "shot by terrorists on a motorcycle and that my dad was wounded really bad". She added: "Paramedics tried to send her an ambulance. The ambulance got hit by a rocket."In December 2023, the kibbutz announced that both Judi and Gadi were killed that day and their bodies were being held hostage in Wednesday, an Israeli military official said the couple's bodies were recovered from the Khan Younis area following an operation based on "precise intelligence" from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet security said they could not disclose further details due to the sensitivity of the operation. However, Israeli Army Radio reported the intelligence was obtained through the Shin Bet's interrogation of a Palestinian fighter captured by Israeli troops in Gaza."We will keep doing the utmost for the mission of bringing our hostages back - the living, to reunite with their families, and the deceased to dignified burial. We will deploy all the methods and tools in our disposal for this goal," the military official Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged decision-makers to do everything they could to agree a new ceasefire deal with Hamas to secure the return of all the remaining hostages."There is no need to wait another 608 agonizing days for this," it said. "The mission can be completed as early as tomorrow morning. This is what the majority of the Israeli people want."US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was "united in prayer" for the Haggai family."Hamas must release all remaining hostages, including Omer Neutra and Itay Chen," he added, referring to two other Israeli-Americans who the Israeli military says were killed on 7 October while serving as soldiers and whose bodies were taken back to Prime Minister Mark Carney said: "The return of their remains is a time to begin to heal and to rest. We mourn with [Judi Haggai's] family. May her memory be a blessing."Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented cross-border attack almost 20 months ago, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the far, 199 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with least 54,677 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the territory's Hamas-run health imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month truce during which 33 Israeli hostages and five Thai hostages were freed. Israel said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release the remaining 19 May, the Israeli military launched an expanded offensive that Netanyahu said would see troops "take control of all areas" of Gaza. Israel also partially eased its blockade, allowing some food into the territory amid warnings from experts of a looming than 4,400 people have reportedly been killed in Gaza over the past three months, while 640,000 others have been displaced again by Israeli ground operations and evacuation of a new ceasefire deal faded last week, with Hamas and Israel remaining at odds over the conditions of the latest US said it was prepared to release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 dead ones, which was the number specified in US envoy Steve Witkoff's proposal, in exchange for a 60-day truce and the release of Palestinian the group also repeated its demands for guarantees that the truce would lead to a permanent ceasefire, as well as a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the resumption of unrestricted aid called Hamas's statement a refusal of the proposal, and Witkoff said it was totally unacceptable. But a Hamas official insisted it had acted positively and responsibly. — BBC
