CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – It’s been over a month since ICE agents, with guns drawn, took Dante Lopez from his Coral Springs home and from his family.
Since his ICE arrest in early February, he was released from the Broward County Main Jail and transferred to the Krome ICE facility in southwest Miami-Dade, where he is still waiting to learn his fate.
Lopez had been under ICE supervision since 2022, waiting to be assigned a date for an asylum interview with agents.
Attorney Yoel Lemus is now representing Lopez.
“So right now, Dante is kind of in a limbo,” said Lemus.
At the time of his arrest, Lopez’s former attorney told Local 10 News, beyond being in the country illegally, Lopez did not have a criminal record and should not have been prioritized by ICE agents.
But the Coral Springs man was part of some 20,000 immigrants living in the country illegally, with or without prior criminal records, who were arrested by ICE agents within President Donald Trump’s first month in office.
Lemus believes many ICE facilities still don’t have the resources, like judges, needed to process immigrants still in detention.
“They’re overpopulated, they’re crowded, there are too many people and they’re not processing them fast enough,” he said.
Loved ones created a GoFundMe page to help the family collect funds for Lopez’s legal fees, and it can be found by clicking here.