How ICE Shackled and Deported a Man in Wrongful Arrest Under New Florida Law
Juan Aguilar was driving home from work in a suburb of Jacksonville, Florida, when he took a wrong turn and grazed the side of another car.
For the other driver, the minor accident meant she had to miss a country music concert and deal with the repairs. For Aguilar, a 49-year-old undocumented immigrant and father of three, it ended 30 years of life in America.
Aguilar was arrested and convicted in May under a controversial new Florida immigration law that police and prosecutors weren’t allowed to enforce, after a federal judge blocked it in April. The undocumented passenger in his car was also arrested, though not convicted, under that law — which makes it a crime to enter the state as an undocumented person. They are among at least 27 people arrested in Florida since the judge’s order.
Within three days of his May 29 arrest, Aguilar was convicted and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. By the time prosecutors corrected the unlawful charge and threw out the conviction, Aguilar had already been deported to Mexico.
“They never gave me the opportunity to defend myself,” he told The Marshall Project in Spanish.
How ICE Shackled and Deported a Man in Wrongful Arrest Under New Florida Law | The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/07/15/florida-immigration-wrongful-arrests
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