Summary
Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports.
On 8 April, a border patrol official found Hermosillo “without the proper immigration documents” and claimed that the young American had admitted entering the US illegally from Mexico.
On 17 April, a federal judge dismissed his case. “He did say he was a US citizen, but they didn’t believe him.”
“Under the Trump administration’s theory of the law, the government could have banished this U.S. citizen to a Salvadoran prison then refused to do anything to bring him back,” Mark Joseph Stern, a legal analyst for Slate, wrote on Bluesky. “This is why the Constitution guarantees due process to all. Could it be more obvious?”
They probably asked him something like “Did you use an official checkpoint to get into the US from Mexico?” And he said “No” because he didn’t enter at all, but they interpreted it as he crossed illegally.