In the second-known case this month alone, it has been revealed the US immigration Gestapo falsely arrested and imprisoned a US citizen on bogus charges that he had entered the country “illegally.”
After spending 10 days imprisoned at the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona, a judge ordered 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, a US citizen, released last Thursday and the charges against him dismissed. Hermosillo was released the same day as 20-year-old Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a US citizen born in the state of Georgia, who was detained on false charges that he had entered the state of Florida “illegally.”
Arizona Public Media (AZPM) first reported on April 18 that Hermosillo was arrested by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents while walking near their headquarters building in Tuscon, Arizona, after he got lost. According to the outlet, which cited interviews from family members, Hermosillo, his girlfriend and their 9-month old daughter are from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and were in Tucson to visit with family members.
Grace Leyva, the aunt of Hermosillo’s girlfriend, told AZPM that the family tried desperately to locate Hermosillo after he was arrested. After making several phone calls to local police departments the family discovered that he had been moved to the Florence Correctional Center, a Core Civic-run private prison used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a long-term holding facility and transfer hub within the deportation gulag network.
Leyva told AZPM that after the family located him another member of the family drove to the detention facility some 70 miles north of Tucson but was not allowed to see him or have him released into their custody.
In a court hearing on Wednesday, Hermosillo’s family provided his birth certificate and Social Security card, proving his US citizenship.
Levya claimed that Hermosillo told agents before he was arrested he was a US citizen. “He did say he was US citizen but they didn’t believe him,” she told AZPM, adding, “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have if they would not [have] got that information yesterday in the court and gave that to ICE and the Border Patrol. He probably would have been deported already to Mexico.”
After a judge dismissed the charges against Hermosillo, the family said he was released late in the evening.
Prior to the false imprisonment of Lopez-Gomez and Hermosillo, the Washington Post reported that at least seven US citizens have been detained or deported since Trump’s second inauguration. There is no question that hundreds, if not thousands, of US citizens have been detained or even deported since ICE was created in 2003. A 2011 study estimated that since 2003, between 1 and 1.5 percent of those imprisoned by ICE—over 20,000 people—were US citizens.
The study noted at that time the US policy of deporting Mexican-American citizens and legal Mexican residents from the US “has very clear parallels to the Nazi administrative expulsion and exclusion polices from 1933-1937.” It also recalls the Mexican Repatriation during the Great Depression when Mexican citizens and Mexican Americans were expelled across the southern border. Up to 60 percent of the more than 300,000 men, women and children deported from the US to Mexico were American citizens.
The arrest and imprisonment of Hermosillo is the latest injustice that has provoked widespread outrage among broad layers of the population. In mass protests across the United States on Saturday, tens of thousands of people, immigrant and US-born alike, denounced the Trump administration’s trampling of democratic rights, including the evisceration of “due process” guaranteed to everyone, regardless of citizenship status under the US Constitution.
Terrified that this growing anger will metastasize into a mass movement that will bring down the Trump government, on Monday the Homeland Security Department tried to claim that Hermosillo lied to Border Patrol agents and told them he was in the country illegally.
In a statement on X, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Hermosillo “approached Border patrol in Tucson and stated he had entered the U.S. illegally through Nogales.”
McLaughlin’s statement contradicts the official criminal complaint submitted on April 9 by Border Patrol agent Eric R. Wood. In that report, Wood wrote that agents found Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona,” not Tucson. Nogales is located over 70 miles south of Tucson. Hermosillo and his family members say he has never been to Nogales.
Indonesian father to US citizen facing deportation after visa “silently” revoked
As part of the Trump administration’s fascistic “mass deportation” operation, immigration authorities have been pioneering a new sinister tactic in which they do not alert visa holders that their visas have been revoked. Instead of informing immigrants about their changed status, immigration police are showing up at workplaces, homes and courts unannounced and kidnapping people.
In a recent case from Marshall, Minnesota (pop. 14,000) first reported by the Star Tribune, 33-year old Aditya Wahuy Harsono was arrested in the basement of the hospital he works at after his student visa was revoked four days prior. Speaking to the Tribune, Harsono said he had no idea his visa had been revoked and even told agents at the time of his arrest that his paperwork was in order.
Speaking to the Tribune, David Wilson, a Minneapolis-based attorney, noted the Trump administration was using a tactic called “silent revocation.” He said, “They’re doing it because they don’t want ICE to lose the advantage of surprise.”
He added, “We’re in uncharted territory with such an aggressive approach with students and visa holders who are lawfully admitted to the US.”
Harsono told the paper he was not aware that his F-1 student visa had been revoked prior to the arrest. In revoking his visa, DHS cited a 2022 incident in which Harsono was convicted of misdemeanor property damage for spray-painting graffiti.
Harsono told the paper he thought his arrest was linked to his political speech, specifically his participation in a April 2021 demonstration commemorating the police murder of George Floyd. At the time Harsono was charged with “unlawful assembly” but it was later dropped.
Speaking to the Tribune, Harsono said he first came to the US in 2015 and returned to Indonesia in 2021 following the “unlawful assembly” arrest. Despite the arrest, Harsono was approved for a student visa to finish his MBA and returned to Minnesota in 2022 when he met his future wife. Together they have an 8-month old daughter.
As of April 21, Inside Higher Ed has identified over 1,680 international students at over 250 colleges and universities who have had their student visas revoked. Over 1,000 students including Mahmoud Khalil, Momodou Taal and Rümeysa Öztürk have had their visas revoked over allegations of “antisemitism,” that is for speaking and writing in opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.