Freddy Antonio Tellez Lopez thought he did things the right way.
Lopez fled his home country of Nicaragua in 2019. He feared persecution from the country’s authoritarian regime as an openly gay man and as a supporter of government dissidents.
Two years later, he crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, applied for asylum in the United States and settled in Florida, while waiting for his case to play out. Lopez worked as a waiter for years and eventually saved enough cash to purchase a home.
He created a life for himself in the U.S. and set down roots.
Yet, in October 2025, the 42-year-old with a clean criminal record went to a scheduled asylum appointment in Miami and found himself in handcuffs — detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“I never thought they were going to detain me,” Lopez said, in Spanish. “I’ve never committed a crime. I’ve been working in this country for almost five years. I don’t even have a single traffic ticket.”
READ MORE: Former Alligator Alcatraz detainee: ‘Prison was better than that place’
Lopez’s experience, recounted to WLRN and verified through documents and additional reporting, is reflective of tens of thousands of other immigrants without criminal records arrested during the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown.
Non-citizens like Lopez are not only being arrested en masse, but also detained for months with no end in sight — thanks to the Trump administration’s legal policy barring them from receiving a bond.
Bond agreements allow people to be released from detention while their court cases are ongoing. Under past U.S. administrations, mandatory detention was common for immigrants who just arrived at the southern border, and uncommon for those already living in the U.S. who did not have criminal records and/or were not a flight risk.
“I never thought they were going to detain me. I’ve never committed a crime. I’ve been working in this country for almost five years. I don’t even have a single traffic ticket.”Freddy Lopez
That changed last July, when a leaked memorandum revealed acting ICE director Todd Lyons directed that all immigrants who crossed the border illegally would be kept detained until their cases were resolved. The policy is still being litigated, but a federal appeals court recently ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s policy.
“Being in detention is a choice,” a spokesperson for ICE said in a statement to WLRN. They encouraged undocumented immigrants to self-deport by receiving free flights and cash bonuses.
“We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream,” the spokesperson wrote. “If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return.”
But to Magdalena Cuprys, one of Lopez’s immigration attorneys, ICE’s stance makes no sense.
“This whole policy right now is: ‘we want immigrants to do this the right way,’” Cuprys said. “Well, he did everything the right way.”
Fleeing Nicaragua
In San Lorenzo, Nicaragua, Lopez ran a restaurant, called El Taurete (“The Stool” in Spanish). It was shut down by the Sandinista government, Lopez said, because he supported protestors with food and water during a demonstration.
He said the harassment culminated with police in his hometown obtaining a warrant for his arrest.
The Murillo-Ortega dictatorship has been accused of repressing the Nicaraguan people — especially Catholic and LGBTQ citizens. As recently as February, the U.S. State Department sanctioned senior officials for persecuting Catholic clergy and other abuses.
Lopez feared the retaliation would be worse if the Sandinista government found out he was gay and Catholic.
“They have jailed all the candidates of the opposition that were running for the presidency of Nicaragua,” Lopez wrote in his asylum application. “What would they do to me, a simple citizen?”
So, he fled. Traveling through Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, he finally crossed into the U.S. in April 2021. Nobody stopped him at the border in Arizona — a time when illegal border crossings surged under the Biden administration. He made his way to North Florida and went to live with a family friend.
Lopez applied for asylum in the U.S., a humanitarian protection for people fleeing persecution.
He spent years working at a restaurant in Jefferson County, paid taxes and even purchased a home. During his time living in Florida, Lopez was never arrested or charged with a crime, according to court records.
That all changed in October 2025, when ICE detained him at his scheduled asylum appointment in Miami.
“ They scheduled him for an interview to discuss his asylum, and that's when he was detained,” Cuprys, the attorney, said. “Instead of conducting the interview, they arrested him.”
Detention
Lopez spent roughly two weeks in Alligator Alcatraz, the detention center in the remote Everglades currently under investigation by two U.S. senators amid allegations of torture.
“In Alcatraz, everything was awful,” he said. “They tie your hands and feet to get your medicine. They don’t let you sleep. You can only bathe twice a week.”
He compared being there to a “natural disaster.”
Lopez was then transferred to Broward Transitional Center, a privately-run immigrant detention center in Broward County, where he spent the next five months.
The facility is operated by private prison contractor GEO Group.
Like many ICE detention facilities, it has seen increased volume in people since President Trump’s second term began. Calls for emergency services to the facility doubled in the first six months of last year, according to news reports. In April 2025, a Haitian woman detained by ICE died at the facility during a medical emergency.
In November 2025, while detained at BTC, Lopez said a guard sexually assaulted him.
“A guard, a man… When the lights went out he went right to my bed and I screamed,” he told WLRN. “I went crazy and couldn't sleep after that, so they sent me to a psychiatrist.”
A guard went into Lopez’s cell while he was sleeping, touched Lopez’s shoulder and touched his own groin, according to Lopez’s complaint, detailed in a Broward Sheriff’s Office report.
In an emailed statement to WLRN, an ICE spokesperson wrote that “Tellez-Lopez’s sexual assault accusations were determined to be FALSE after an investigation by (BSO).”
Lopez couldn’t identify the guard and his roommate told investigators he didn’t witness it. Surveillance footage “yielded negative results” and “didn’t corroborate” Lopez’s complaint, a BSO investigator wrote. As a result, the agency said it did not have evidence to investigate further and deemed the allegation “unfounded.”
GEO Group did not respond to specific questions about Lopez’s complaint.
“GEO mandates zero tolerance towards all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment in all its facilities,” a spokesperson said.
Habeas corpus
As the Trump administration’s enforcement increased dramatically, immigration detentions spiked and so have habeas corpus petitions.
The requests — a bedrock legal right for a judge to review a detention — are one of the last legal avenues available to immigrants seeking freedom from detention.
Since January 2025, there have been approximately 34,500 requests filed, which is more than the last three presidential administrations combined, according to a ProPublica analysis of court data.
Lopez’s request was one of more than 1,000 that originated from the U.S. Southern District of Florida, which includes nine counties from the Florida Keys to Vero Beach.
In December 2025, an immigration judge denied Lopez’s request for bond under the Trump Administration’s legal interpretation that immigrants who entered the country illegally were ineligible.
“Because the law requires the detention of all applicants for admission, this Court does not have jurisdiction to review (Lopez’s bond request),” U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Walleisa, in Miami, ruled.
Cuprys and another attorney filed a habeas petition in Fort Lauderdale federal court, where a federal court judge ruled in February that ICE must give Lopez a bond hearing or let him go.
He got his hearing on March 3. Bond was allowed and — after putting up a full $15,000 — Lopez was freed.
Lopez’s other attorney, Matthew Meyers, said that his client’s homeownership helped.
“ There's no better way to show that I'm establishing my home here and I'm going to live here,” Meyers said. “Bonds are not supposed to be punitive. They're supposed to make sure that the person shows up in court.”
Lopez went back to North Florida and back to work. His attorneys are working on his asylum appeal.
The ordeal was difficult for Lopez to relive. At one point in his interview with WLRN, he became overwhelmed with emotion.
“People should know that the law is supposed to punish criminals, not innocent immigrants who’ve never committed a crime,” he said through tears. “Who came to work and overcome what happened in their home country.”
