Florida DACA recipient released from Alligator Alcatraz, attorney says. He's still jailed

Ryan Gillespie, Orlando Sentinel on Jul 25, 2025

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ORLANDO, Fla. — A Central Florida immigrant — who lives legally in the United States, according to his attorneys — has been released from the state’s Alligator Alcatraz detention center but remains in federal custody, his lawyer said Friday.

The man, who is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, was arrested and transferred to the facility in early July, despite having the Obama-era federal protection that shields undocumented people who arrived as children from deportation.

He’s now being held at a jail in South Florida, said Phillip Arroyo, his Orlando-based attorney..

“We are happy to report he has been released from Alligator Alcatraz and was quietly sent to Glades County Jail without any notice to us last week,” Arroyo said in an email.

Since he has DACA, he should never have been sent into immigration detention, his attorneys have maintained.

Arroyo said his client, whom he isn’t naming to avoid retaliation from immigration authorities, relayed that an agent at Alligator Alcatraz told him he wasn’t supposed to be there. The Orlando Sentinel previously reported on the man’s detention at the facility. He was one of the first transferred to Alligator Alcatraz, set up by Florida to help in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport large numbers of undocumented immigrants.

The man, now 36, came to the United States with his family as a child, has a job and a commercial driver’s license, Josephine Arroyo, Phillip’s wife and another of his attorneys, previously told the Sentinel.

Federal authorities haven’t filed deportation charges against the 36-year-old man, who was originally ensnared in the immigration system after a traffic stop for driving with a suspended license, Arroyo said.

He was first issued a citation in Seminole County last year for driving with a suspended license, and the court mailed a notice to appear in court to an address where no longer lived. When he missed the court date, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Then, when the man was pulled over earlier this year for having a broken mirror in Orange County, law enforcement saw the warrant for his arrest in the court system and took him into custody, Josephine Arroyo said earlier this month.

His legal team showed the court the man’s valid driver’s license, and the charge was reduced to a citation. But in early July, he still became one of the state’s first detainees at the swiftly built, and controversial, Alligator Alcatraz, constructed at an airstrip in the Everglades.

“Our firm has filed a motion to terminate his matter with ICE and release him due to him being legally in the US as a DACA recipient this entire time, and we have yet to hear back from them,” Arroyo said. “Our next step is to file a habeas corpus in federal court to demand his immediate release.”

The case reflects a larger trend reported on by the Sentinel this month, that a bulk of those booked into jail with ICE detainers face nothing more than traffic charges.

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