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Notes -
https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/04/17/u-s-born-man-held-for-ice-under-floridas-new-anti-immigration-law/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-born-citizen-detained-ice-immigration-florida-rcna201800
A Florida State Trooper claimed a natural born citizen admitted to entering the country illegally. Thankfully, his family was able to prove his citizenship to a state judge. Unfortunately, ICE requested Florida keep him in custody, for an as-yet not-public reason, and Florida has done so, despite the citizen not being charged with any state crime, other than an unenforceable statute against illegal immigrants entering Florida, of which he was already proven innocent, even if it were enforceable. He was later released, thankfully.
Any data on the rate of these sorts of things happening, in the past? Should or shouldn't this be worrying and why?
The clear and uncontested facts are that a US district judge enjoined Florida (specifically the AGs of Florida) from enforcing 811.102, yet this person was arrested (Case #2025 MM 000739 A001) under 811.102. This clearly seems contradictory, yet it still happened.
Let's delve into what might happen in this case. Let's say that Florida (or more specifically Florida officials) just want to YOLO disobey the order. Ex parte Young says that any state officials who disobey the order can be held in contempt of court, which could result in an unpleasant visit by a bunch of federal agents. So it's probably safe to say that none of the defendants are going to disobey this order, unless they have the balls to try to overturn Ex parte Young.
But maybe the defendants aren't right in this case. I looked at the complaint in courtlistener: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.686918/gov.uscourts.flsd.686918.1.0.pdf and it only lists the AGs in Florida.
This seems to be the general procedure for this kind of suit, and it's consistent with other suits filed challenging criminal law in other states.(Checking some other constitutional challenge cases, some name the police as defendants, but others don't. Not sure exactly when it's warranted) But I wonder if there is a loophole, since it doesn't actually apply to any of the cops involved in the process, and it doesn't seem like the police organ of the state is under the AG umbrella. So that means maybe that cops can freely arrest people for violations of 811.102 at will.Of course in general cops won't want to arrest and jail people who won't ever have charges filed. This is partially why criminals are allowed to run free by the cops in districts with Soros prosecutors, because the police feel it's futile to arrest people who will just be released immediately. But that doesn't mean the cops can't arrest them, they just generally won't. But maybe in this case since they can just hand the illegals over to a cooperative ICE as soon as charges aren't filed, so it's still a happy ending.
If this is indeed the case, then the entire thing is simply the result of a technicality. The plaintiffs will have to amend their case to add the proper police officials, serve a bunch of people, and ask for another TRO. But again if that's the case, this loophole only works once, as plaintiffs in the future will need to remember to add the extra defendants in future suits.
Which specific officials or entities get sued depends on what claims the plaintiffs are making and what relief they're seeking. Basically, who is responsible for the bad act you're challenging, and who is capable of giving you the relief you seek. Here, the plaintiffs are making what's called a facial claim, meaning they are challenging the constitutionality of the statute "on its face." They're claiming it's inherently unconstitutional in all possible applications. They therefore only need to sue the state-level officials, as the actions of individual officers are almost irrelevant. By contrast, an "as-applied" challenge merely claims that a particular application of a law is unconstitutional (e.g., a police search conducted without a warrant), not the underlying law itself. In that case, you would sue the individual officers responsible since they're the ones who acted in error.
Even so, the AG has no power over the police in general. So at least at this phase of the litigation, it would seem that the TRO would only affect the defendants of the lawsuit, which would include the AG and anyone under their control.
That's not how it works. First, the police do not have the authority to enforce the law, strictly speaking. Their job is to investigate crimes and provide evidence to the local prosecutors, who are the ones actually in charge of enforcing the laws; no matter how good a case he thinks he has, a cop can't force prosecution if the DA drops the charges. That out of the way, there are some practical reasons why the AG is the defendant in these kinds of cases. While the AG generally doesn't have any supervisory authority over local prosecutor offices, they are still officially responsible for enforcement of the laws in the state. When a plaintiff mounts a facial challenge to a law, the state invariably takes a position on that challenge. If instead you require suits against 67 county prosecutors you get 67 different positions depending on what the DA thinks, and none of those positions may be in accordance with what the government thinks. Similarly, if your guy is in rural Bubb County and out of expedience you only sue the Bubb County prosecutor now you have some rural, part-time prosecutor charged with taking a position on a law that could affect the entire state going forward. If you change the procedure so that the court ruling can only affect Bubb County, then you wind up with a situation where you have a law that ostensibly applies in the entire state but has 67 different meanings depending on what county you're in. Having the AG stand in as defendant allows the Florida government to argue a position on how Florida law should be interpreted.
This suit is actually against 69 different county prosecutors, so your logic is flawed. Check the linked pdf in my top comment.
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