U.S.-Born Citizen Detained Under ICE Hold Despite Birth Certificate

A U.S. citizen was arrested for entering the state of Florida as an “unauthorized alien” under a state law that shouldn’t have been enforced in the first place.

Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez was set to remain in jail for 48 hours under an ICE hold, according to the Florida Phoenix. His mother and a community advocate presented his birth certificate and Social Security card during a hearing in Leon County, but the judge said that she had no authority to release him due to the court’s jurisdiction.

Lopez Gomez was released Thursday evening after his story received media attention and protesters gathered at the Leon County jail where he was being held.

Lopez Gomez, 21, was born in Georgia. According to court records, he was assigned a judge as well as a public defender. He appears to have been arrested and charged under an “anti-immigration” law passed in Florida two months ago, despite the fact that the law is currently under a temporary restraining order and isn’t supposed to be enforced.

It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts swept up an American citizen, and it happened to be aided by local authorities in Florida. Before Trump was even sworn in as president, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged his cooperation with the Trump administration’s attempts to deport as many immigrants as possible.

Why did local authorities completely disregard a federal court ruling in order to arrest Lopez Gomez, and then disregard the fact he’s a natural-born U.S. citizen? Is this a mistake, or are they taking their lead from the president, who is currently disregarding a court order from the Supreme Court?

* This piece has been updated to correct the nature of Lopez Gomez’s arrest.

This story has been updated with news of Lopez Gomez’s release.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement took violent steps earlier this week to arrest a Guatemalan man who not only has no criminal record but wasn’t even the target authorities were looking for, according to his lawyer.

Juan Francisco Méndez, a 29-year old Guatemalan immigrant, was arrested without a warrant Monday in New Bedford, Massachusetts—but that’s not the only shady thing about this arrest.

Méndez and his wife, Marilú Domingo Ortiz, were in their car when a pair of armed officers stopped them. In a video shared by The New Bedford Light, the couple told the officers that they were waiting for his lawyer to arrive before speaking with the agents. When Ortiz asked whether they had a warrant for her husband’s arrest, the officers did not respond. When asked if she could leave, they said, “No.”

In a statement, ICE told The New Republic that Méndez “refused to comply with officers’ instructions and resisted apprehension.”

The officers continued to ask Ortiz to roll down her window to speak. After some time, one of the officers, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, violently smashed the back window of Méndez’s car with what appeared to be a pickax.

“They forcibly removed me and my husband,” Ortiz said in Spanish in the video. “They pulled me out of the car violently. They treated me badly too.”

ICE said in its statement that it “concurs with the actions deemed appropriate by the officers on the scene who are trained to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that ensures the success of the operation and prioritizes the safety of our officers.”

By the time Méndez’s immigration lawyer, Ondine Galvez Sniffin, arrived at the scene, it was too late for her to tell the officers they had taken the wrong man.

“They said they were looking for a certain individual, by a different name. And I said that’s not my client,” Sniffin told WBZ-TV CBS Boston. “They said, um, ‘He has prior entries to this country,’ and I said that’s not true. I know my client’s history, and that’s not him.”

Méndez, who has been in the country for two years with no criminal record, is undocumented and awaiting documentation that would solidify his asylum status, according to Sniffin.

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell said that in detaining Méndez, ICE broke its long-standing practice of alerting city officials before conducting an arrest. The New Bedford Police Department spokesperson confirmed Mitchell’s statement, adding that ICE officers gave the wrong address when they finally did report to the police during the incident.

Mitchell said that communication with ICE has been “inconsistent” since the beginning of Donald Trump’s administration.

“We hear the Trump administration say that they’re prioritizing convicted criminals. I’ll be the first to say I want criminals removed from the streets of New Bedford,” Mitchell told the Light. “But it should matter to everybody if these people are not criminals and they’re being detained because their identity is mistaken, that they are still adjudicating their immigration status and are waiting for a hearing.”

The Light spoke with Méndez Wednesday. “We are not criminals. We are hardworking people who came here to fight for our families and for a better future,” Méndez said from a facility in Dover, New Hampshire. He added that he was being held with 30 or 40 other individuals detained for immigration issues.

Méndez’s arrest comes amid a sharp crackdown on undocumented immigrants by the Trump administration, which has begun carrying out expedited deportations of immigrants the government alleges are gang members who, more often than not, have no criminal history.

The Trump administration may have just revoked an international student’s visa because his church group caught too many fish. 

Suguru Onda, a Ph.D. candidate from Japan studying at Brigham Young University, was notified earlier this month that his student visa was being revoked because he was “identified in criminal records check,” Deseret News reported Wednesday.  

It’s unclear exactly why Onda’s name was flagged in a criminal records check. Other than a couple of speeding tickets, his only run-in with the law was during a fishing trip with his church group in 2019, when he was reported for harvesting more fish than his fishing license allowed. Onda didn’t catch any fish himself, but he was overseeing the group and held responsible for the violation. The charge was later dismissed.

Onda’s attorney, Adam Crayk, believes the fishing incident could’ve led to his name being identified, he told Deseret News. The father of five was not given an explanation for why his visa was being revoked, and the revocation notice itself was vague. 

“Individual identified in criminal records check and/or has had their visa revoked, service record has been terminated,” the notice read.

Before Donald Trump took office and waged war on higher education and the civil liberties of international students, visas were typically revoked for serious offenses and felonies, something a little worse than driving too fast or being in a group that caught too many fish. Since January, at least 901 students across 128 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked, according to a review of data from the Associated Press. 

On Wednesday, an immigration-focused law firm in Atlanta filed a lawsuit against Trump on behalf of 133 foreign students. The filing reveals some of the staggering reasons students believe they’re being targeted (the visas are often revoked without providing a specific reason), which range from expired license plates to speeding tickets. Add the violation of a fishing license to the list.

Onda’s attorney is pursuing various options to keep him in the country, but the aspiring computer scientist told Deseret News he’s already “packing everything” in case he needs to leave abruptly. He joins nearly 1,000 other students doing the same. 

Senator Chris Van Hollen’s attempt to check on the welfare of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador, was rebuffed by the country’s military Thursday. 

The Democratic senator from Maryland traveled to El Salvador Wednesday, meeting with the country’s Vice President Felix Ulloa. The next day, he attempted to visit the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a prison known for human rights abuses, where Abrego Garcia is being held. But less than two miles away from the prison, Van Hollen was stopped at a military checkpoint. 

According to USA Today, which was following Van Hollen’s motorcade, the checkpoint appeared to have been set up deliberately to stop the senator. 

“We were just denied entry into CECOT—the notorious prison in El Salvador where Mr. Abrego Garcia is being illegally held,” Van Hollen posted on X. “We were there for one simple reason: to check on his well-being, which his family and lawyers have not been allowed to do. We won’t stop fighting.”

The Trump administration has refused to do anything to have Abrego Garcia released, even though it has acknowledged in court that he was deported to El Salvador in error. Instead, it has repeatedly called him a gang member and terrorist with no evidence, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele repeated the same false accusations to reporters in the White House on Monday. 

The refusal to allow Van Hollen into the prison is clearly politically motivated, as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been allowed to make propaganda videos in front of its inmates and Republican Representatives Riley Moore and Jason Smith got to tour the prison on Tuesday. Abrego Garcia’s well-being is clearly not a priority for the Trump administration or El Salvador’s government. What did they want to hide from Van Hollen?  

Elon Musk knows which members of Congress detest the courts as much as he does, and he wants to keep them around.

The billionaire gave more than $144,000 to more than two dozen Congress members who support impeaching judges or restricting their power, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. It’s rare to give money to candidates this soon before a midterm election, and an indication that Musk will do everything he can to help the GOP stay in power.

Some House members, such as Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, got the money from Musk almost immediately after introducing legislation to punish various judges. “I just introduced Articles of Impeachment against radical activist Judge James Boasberg,” Gill wrote on X on March 18. “He is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors and should be removed from office.” The next day, Musk gave Gill’s committee $6,600, the Post reported.

Musk donated the same amount, which is the upper limit of the per-race maximum, to Senator Chuck Grassley, who introduced legislation to limit judicial powers, and Representative Derrick Van Orden, who introduced a bill to impeach U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer.*

As the Trump administration faces a flurry of lawsuits, Musk is desperately trying to discredit judges who rule against the president. He’s called for the impeachment of judges who tried to block the Department of Government Efficiency’s unlawful dismantling of federal agencies, offered people money to sign a petition against “activist judges,” and made dozens of ludicrous claims against his judicial enemies on social media.

“This is a judicial coup,” Musk posted on X in mid-March, after a judge blocked Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

Musk’s $144,000 contribution may not seem like much right now, but his financial support for candidates this soon before the 2026 midterm elections is a bad sign for the courts. He’s playing the long game and is doing everything he can to bolster the GOP’s relentless attack on the rule of law for years to come.

* Correction: Grassley did not call for Boasberg’s impeachment.

Donald Trump has a new scheme for making money off of the sweeping tariffs he rapidly imposes, adjusts, and delays, first reported by independent journalist Judd Legum.

Trump Media and Technology Group unveiled a “suite” of thematic “Truth Social-branded Separately Managed Accounts” that it had crafted in collaboration with Yorkville America Equities and Index Technologies Group.

The investment portfolios were organized around the themes of “Faith & Values,” “Liberty & Security,” “Energy Independence,” and “Made in America.”

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes said that the SMAs were designed to meet investors’ demand “to support a wide range of outstanding, non-woke, and innovative companies across key sectors of the U.S. economy.”

It’s not clear what specific assets will be in each portfolio. “Made in America” is likely to contain stocks associated with American manufacturers, while “Liberty & Security” could contain assets for defense contractors and private prisons, which stand to make a killing off of Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

But Trump’s position as a shareholder of TMTG presents a clear conflict of interest, considering the amount of power he has to roil the stock market. Since entering office, Trump has demonstrated the ability to manipulate the value of any particular stock by simply announcing a tariff or exemption, putting him in a particular position of power over his yields from TMTG.

Trump profits directly from TMTG in two key ways, Legum explained in his newsletter Public Notice. “First, TMTG will invest a portion of its cash reserves in accounts. Secondly, as the majority shareholder in TMTG, Trump will benefit from the fees generated by these accounts. The performance of the underlying assets held in these accounts will determine both TMTG’s return on its cash reserves and interest from outside investors,” he wrote.

Through TMTG’s actively managed investment accounts, Trump would be able to directly financially benefit simply by announcing or rescinding a policy. For example, Apple stock sank when Trump announced his sweeping “reciprocal tariff” policy on April 2 and continued to drop as he escalated tariffs on Chinese goods to the triple digits. But when the administration announced that there would be an exemption applied to electronic devices on April 11, Apple stock began to improve.

Trump has been accused of obvious market manipulation after he instructed his followers that it was a “great time to buy” just hours before announcing a 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariff” policy. He even bragged about how much money he made for his billionaire buddies who came to visit him in the White House.

The head of the FCC, Brandon Carr, attacked NBC’s parent company, Comcast, in an X post over its coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly accused of being a violent gang member despite admitting in court that he was accidentally deported to El Salvador. 

In his post, Carr repeated Trump’s accusations—which have not been proven in court—and insinuated that Comcast was violating federal law, taking aim at its broadcast licensing and accusing the company of “news distortion.” 

His statement also quoted a different post from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung decrying the lack of media coverage for an alleged victim of murder by a totally different immigrant, as the Trump administration seeks to conflate the two stories. 

Carr’s attack seems to be threatening a news network with penalties for coverage he doesn’t like, a disturbing attack on freedom of the press from a government official who is supposed to be protecting the constitutional right. In fact, with no trace of irony, Carr’s previous X post praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio for “smashing the censorship cartel and restoring free speech rights to Americans.”

The entire Trump administration has been hell-bent on defying a Supreme Court order and refusing to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. They’ve compared him to Osama bin Laden and tried to paint him as an abusive husband, a claim that his U.S. citizen wife has rebutted. On Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have new evidence against Abrego Garcia—but it was nothing more than a rehash of the hearsay Trump officials were already citing.  

For his part, Carr has been attacking Comcast and NBC for weeks, announcing an investigation into Comcast’s diversity, equity, and inclusion practices just weeks into Trump’s presidency. And he has the full blessing of Trump, who is pushing his own vendettas against media outlets such as CBS News at the moment. 

But if Carr and Trump want the news to stop attacking their disregard of a Supreme Court order, attacking the media won’t help. The quickest way to get the news to stop focusing on Abrego Garcia is to do the right thing and return him to the U.S.

The man in charge of U.S. counterterrorism said that anybody against Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan is technically committing a felony by “aiding and abetting” terrorism.

“There’s a line that divides us. Do you love America, or do you hate America?” Trump’s Director for Counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka said in an interview with the far-right news outlet Newsmax Wednesday night.

“And we have people who love America, like the president, like his Cabinet, like the directors of his agencies who want to protect Americans,” he continued. “And then there is the other side that is on the side of the cartel members, the side of the illegal aliens, on the side of the terrorists.

“You have to ask yourself, are they technically aiding and abetting them? Because aiding and abetting criminals and terrorists is a crime in federal statute,” Gorka said, absurdly equating opposing unlawful deportations with terrorism.

Ignoring court orders, as Trump has now done multiple times while carrying out his deportation efforts, is also “a crime in federal statute.” Last month, he ignored U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, the majority of whom have no criminal record. On Wednesday, Boasberg said there is a high probability Trump could face criminal contempt charges for his refusal to comply.

Disregarding the law once again, the White House is also refusing to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland man who was unlawfully deported to El Salvador because of an “administrative error”—despite the Supreme Court ordering the government to “facilitate” his return. Abrego Garcia is now being held at CECOT, a megaprison in El Salvador notorious for human rights abuses.

Even though it already admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake, the Trump administration has doubled down on unbacked and harmful claims the father of three is an MS-13 gang member, “human trafficker,” and “violent criminal.”

“The question is solved.… Number one, this individual is a foreign national who came here illegally. So that’s your first two strikes,” Gorka said of Abrego Garcia Wednesday, insisting that his removal was a national security issue. “Then we find out he’s a member of an organization that we recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization. So, three strikes, and you’re out.”

There is no evidence connecting Abrego Garcia to MS-13, human trafficking, or violent crime, and he was granted “withholding of removal status” by a judge in 2019, yet another court order Trump disobeyed to deport an innocent man.

The Department of Justice re-released the same old evidence to support its straw-man argument for deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was removed to El Salvador last month despite having received a protective order against his removal there. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Wednesday night that the DOJ was releasing an “additional” batch of documents about Abrego Garcia, who the government has alleged was an active member of MS-13. But pretty much all the information contained within the documents was already public knowledge—and not damning in the slightest.  

The documents included a gang field interview work sheet, which described Abrego Garcia’s 2019 arrest for loitering outside of a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland. Officers said they had determined Abrego Garcia’s gang affiliation based on what he was wearing, including a hoodie officers said indicated “Hispanic gang culture” and a Chicago Bulls hat, which they said indicated that he was a “member in good standing” with MS-13. The worksheet alleged Abrego Garcia was a member of the “Western” clique, which is based in New York—a place he never even lived.

The worksheet also referred to a “past proven and reliable” source who had identified Abrego Garcia as a member of MS-13. However, The New Republic has confirmed that Ivan Mendez, the Maryland police officer who formally attested to Abrego Garcia’s supposed gang affiliation, was subsequently suspended for giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker. He then was indicted, pleaded guilty, and received probation. 

Earlier this month, Judge Stephanie Thacker of the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit had already dismissed using the gang affiliation worksheet as evidence. “An unsupported—and then abandoned—assertion that Abrego Garcia was a member of a gang does not tip the scales in favor of removal in violation of the Administration’s own withholding order,” she wrote in an order.

“If the Government wanted to prove to the district court that Abrego Garcia was a ‘prominent’ member of MS-13, it has had ample opportunity to do so but has not—nor has it even bothered to try,” she wrote. 

Another document provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a “Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien,” falsely claimed that Abrego Garcia had been arrested “in connection to a murder investigation.” But Abrego Garcia’s gang worksheet clearly stated he had been arrested for loitering. 

The documents do not support White House press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s wild assertion that Abrego Garcia was “engaged in human trafficking.” The documents also disprove Vice President JD Vance’s claim that Abrego Garcia was a “convicted” member of MS-13, as they plainly stated he had no criminal record. They do not, as Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, claimed in a post on X, say he was found with drugs and “rolls of cash.” In fact, he was simply wearing a hoodie with a pattern of rolls of cash.

Despite having only thin evidence of Abrego Garcia’s gang affiliation, Bondi appeared on Fox News Wednesday night, where she called him a “terrorist” and alleged that he was “one of the top MS-13 members.” She demanded that journalists apologize to Donald Trump for referring to Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man.”

The Trump administration is desperate to make the debate over Abrego Garcia’s return about his alleged gang affiliation—but that’s not the central issue of his deportation. Rather, Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported, after receiving a protective order from a U.S. judge, and denied due process in his removal to El Salvador. He was not afforded the opportunity to challenge his designation as a “foreign terrorist” or the location of his deportation. Then the Trump administration refused a direct order from a federal judge, which was then upheld by the Supreme Court, to “facilitate” his return, escalating one man’s removal to a full-on constitutional crisis. 

If the U.S. government can deny Abrego Garcia’s right to due process, they can deny it for anyone—and they are already making plans to broaden the scope of their removals to foreign prisons. U.S. citizens, “homegrowns” as the president has called them, will be next. 

Elon Musk could own yet another stake in the Department of Defense as Donald Trump moves to make his golden shield missile defense a reality.

The billionaire’s company, SpaceX, is a top contender to be awarded part of Trump’s “Golden Dome” defense project, a fantastical air defense system the president claims would protect the U.S. from intercontinental missile strikes. Known officially as the “Iron Dome for America,” the proposed project is modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome defense and would likely cost trillions.

SpaceX has partnered with new-right oligarch Peter Thiel’s defense start-up, Palantir, and Anduril, a drone company that’s raised more than $1.5 billion to build AI-powered weapons. The three companies are front-runners in a bid to build out the project together, Reuters reported Thursday.

Crucially, SpaceX’s role in the Golden Dome would be subscription-based, a way to avoid some Defense Department regulations and implement the system faster, Reuters reported. But it would mean that the government would pay to access SpaceX’s technology instead of owning it in full. That, in turn, could prevent the government from holding any control over the tech’s development or subscription cost.

The president has long warned that nuclear warfare is humanity’s most existential threat. During his first term, Trump called nuclear weapons “the biggest problem in the world,” and his warnings about “World War III” have only escalated since then. As he threatens to withdraw U.S. military defense from a number of allies, prompting dozens of countries to seriously consider embracing nuclear defense, Trump has simultaneously proposed to protect the U.S. with a literal air shield that experts say is “technically impossible.”

“We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland,” Trump promised at the Republican Party convention in August.

“Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system,” he said. “Why should other countries have this, and we don’t?”

The proposal isn’t far off from Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which was designed to defend the U.S. from Soviet missiles but was never implemented. It’s known derisively as “Star Wars.”

In January, Trump issued an executive order requiring the Pentagon to come up with an initial blueprint for the Golden Shield by mid-April. The details of the plan are still murky, but SpaceX’s pitch to Pentagon officials involves building up to 1,000 satellites that would circle the globe to sense ominous missiles, sources told Reuters. If the missiles were determined a threat, they would be shot down by a separate fleet of 200 missiles. It’s as ridiculous as it sounds.

If Musk’s blueprint is approved, it would add billions more to his amassed $38 billion in government contracts across nine federal agencies, all while he continues to slash federal funding and Social Security through the Department of Government Efficiency.