A March 2018 photo of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
19-year-old Jose Hermosillo, who is visiting Tucson from Albuquerque, says he was lost and walking near the Border Patrol headquarters when an agent arrested him for illegally entering the country. Hermosillo was not carrying identification.
Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson. He says he has never been to Nogales.
His girlfriend’s aunt Grace Layva says she and her family made numerous calls looking for him before they found out he was being detained in the Florence Correctional Center, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement uses to detain people.
Another family member drove to the detention center, about 70 miles northwest of Tucson, but said officials wouldn’t provide any information or release him.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the wrongful detention.
The family later provided officials with his birth certificate and social security card.
“He did say he was a U.S. citizen, but they didn't believe him,” Layva said. “I think they would have kept him. I think they would have if they would have not 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.”
A magistrate judge in Tucson dismissed his case on Thursday, and family says he was released much later that night.
There have been other recent cases of U.S. citizens being wrongly detained by immigration officials, including a man wrongly held in Florida after being pulled over during his commute to work.
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.