A Florida Highway Patrol trooper, acting with federal immigration authority, was injured on Monday morning during a traffic stop in Plantation as he tried to handcuff a man, who then managed to briefly escape arrest.
Jonathan Hernandez Guzman, 29, of Stuart, is facing charges of aggravated battery on an officer, attempt to escape and resisting an officer with violence.
The FHP trooper pulled over a Ford F-150 pickup truck with a driver and five passengers inside shortly after 8 a.m. on westbound State Road 84, east of Southwest 136th Avenue, according to an arrest report. The report does not specify the original reason for the traffic stop.
Through FHP’s 287(g) agreement, which deputizes troopers to act with some federal immigration authority, the trooper determined that passenger Hernandez Guzman, originally of Mexico, “was having immigration issues,” the report said.
As the trooper was trying to put Hernandez Guzman in handcuffs “for detention,” he “aggressively turned around causing the single strand rivet of the right handcuff to cut” the trooper’s right hand, the arrest report said. Bleeding, the trooper lost his grip on Hernandez Guzman, who climbed over a divider on the road and swam away through a canal into a nearby neighborhood.
Officers and deputies with Plantation Police, Davie Police and the Broward Sheriff’s Office helped form a perimeter in the area. Shortly before 11 a.m., Hernandez Guzman was found by a K-9 hiding in a bush at a home in the 100 block of Southwest 127th Avenue, according to the report.
The cut on the trooper’s hand needed nine stitches, the report said.
Hernandez Guzman was held in the Broward Main Jail on Tuesday on the three charges and an immigration hold.
Since FHP entered the 287(g) agreement earlier this year, hundreds of state troopers across all 67 counties have been credentialed to act with immigration authority, state officials said at a news conference in Tampa in May. At the time, Gov. Ron DeSantis said more than 100 troopers had been recently sworn in as Special Deputy U.S. Marshals, which “is even over and above” the 287(g) agreement and allows them to execute federal warrants and and conduct “stand-alone operations” without federal partners.
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor vehicles has in recent months highlighted on social media numerous arrests of immigrants after traffic stops. Hundreds of immigrants have been taken into custody in Central Florida alone this year after being stopped for minor traffic violations, a recent Orlando Sentinel investigation found.
In May, troopers pulled over a work truck in northern Palm Beach County, and the encounter ended with an 18-year-old U.S. citizen being detained for hours at an immigration facility. Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio was initially facing a criminal misdemeanor charge of obstructing an officer without violence stemming from the stop, which he recorded on his cellphone, but prosecutors declined to file the charge.
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