US Citizen Detained for 10 Days After He Asked Border Patrol Officer for Help

U.S. Border Patrol arrested and imprisoned a U.S. citizen with learning disabilities in Arizona for over a week earlier this month after he approached an immigration officer asking for help after a medical episode, he has said, contradicting the government’s account of the encounter.

As Popular Information has reported, 19-year-old Jose Hermosillo was arrested on April 8 in Tucson. Hermosillo said in an interview that he had been in town that day to visit his girlfriend’s family when he suffered from a seizure, and took an ambulance to the hospital. He did not bring his ID with him because it was an emergency.

Upon his release, Hermosillo approached a Border Patrol officer, believing that the officer could help him get back to the place he was staying. Instead, the officer accused him of being in the U.S. illegally and arrested him, despite Hermosillo saying that he was a U.S. citizen.

“You’re not from here. Do you have your papers?” Hermosillo recalled the officer saying. Hermosillo said that the officer accused him of lying about being from New Mexico, saying, “Don’t make me [out] like [I’m] stupid. I know you’re from Mexico.”

The officer ordered Hermosillo, who cannot read and can only write his name, to sign a supposed transcript of the encounter. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) later posted a copy of this document on X, claiming that Jose said he is a citizen of Mexico and had crossed the border via the “desert.” DHS claimed that Hermosillo approached an officer “stating he had ILLEGALLY entered the U.S. and identified himself as a Mexican citizen.”

“Mr. Hermosillo’s arrest and detention were a direct result of his own actions and statements,” DHS wrote.

Hermosillo’s girlfriend, Grace Hernandez, has said that he has learning disabilities and did not graduate high school.

“If he did sign it, he doesn’t know how to read, or nothing. He doesn’t know how to read. He doesn’t really understand. He says yes to everything. So he could, he could have done it without knowing what it was,” Hernandez told AZPM.

Immigration agents held Hermosillo for 10 days at Florence Correctional Center in Arizona. He said he was held in a freezing cold cell with 15 men, where many fellow inmates were sick; he contracted the flu but was denied medicine for treatment. “When I dream, I dream I’m still in there,” he told Popular Information.

Hermosillo was released last Thursday after his family provided proof of his citizenship, including a birth certificate and Social Security card. He told a judge that he was a citizen two days into his detention, but was detained for an additional week after prosecutors requested that his hearing be delayed.

Hermosillo is one of numerous U.S. citizens who have been detained by immigration agents since Donald Trump took office, amid the president’s full-scale anti-immigration raid of neighborhoods across the U.S.

Meanwhile, the administration is also reportedly totally disappearing some immigrants, arresting them and leaving no trace of where they were sent. This is the case of Venezuelan immigrant Ricardo Prada Vásquez, who in January erroneously crossed a bridge in Detroit leading to Canada while delivering a food order, and was detained by border agents when he tried to reenter the country.

His friends say the last contact they had with him was March 15, the day the Trump administration deported over 230 immigrants to El Salvador. But Prada is not on the list of people deported, nor is he in any of the propaganda pictures released from the prison. Record searches for Prada come up blank.

“He has simply disappeared,” Prada’s friend, identified as Javier, told The New York Times. After the Times published its story on Prada — more than a month after his disappearance — DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that he was among those sent to El Salvador.