Court Cases

In 2017, Miami-Dade County’s then-Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued an order for county jails to comply with federal immigration detention requests. He was bending to pressure from the first Trump administration. That same year, the County then held our client on an ICE detainer. Our client is a U.S. citizen born in Honduras who can not be deported. This case shows how easily foreign born U.S. citizens (who comprise a significant portion of the population in South Florida) can get caught in ICE's dragnet. The ACLU of Florida and partners filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the county lacked the legal authority to comply with detainers and that the detainer issued against our client lacked probable cause. The defendants motions to dismiss were in large part denied. The case was stayed in March 2020 pending resolution of a related class action.

The Southern Legal Counsel, ACLU of Florida, and pro bono attorney Andy Pozzuto filed filed a federal class action lawsuit against the city of Ocala on behalf of more than 200 other similarly situated homeless persons who have been arrested for sleeping or resting in public areas.