Guatemalan national in ICE custody following multiple arrests, encounter with FHP

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - A Guatemalan national, who is no stranger to law enforcement, is now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody after more than a dozen arrests.

FOX 35 obtained video of his encounter in August with Seminole County sheriff's deputies, who say he was lighting grass on fire.

Court records show Salvador Segura-Diaz, 24, took a plea deal and was released from jail with credit for time served.

But his freedom wouldn't last long.

Last month, Florida Highway Patrol troopers detained him and turned him over to U.S. Border Patrol after they found him walking along the Turnpike in Osceola County.

Dash-cam video from that incident shows troopers questioning Segura-Diaz on the shoulder before one of them places him in a patrol car.

"We [ran] his record checks and discovered that he had approximately 17 previous arrests on various state charges in Tennessee and then also here in Florida," Adam Hoffner, assistant chief patrol agent with the U.S. Border Patrol Miami Sector, said Wednesday. 

However, according to Davidson County, Tennessee, court records obtained by FOX 35, not one of Segura-Diaz's arrests in Nashville led to a conviction. Charges were dropped in each case, including ones where police alleged he threatened to kill someone with a knife and assaulted an officer. 

We asked immigration attorney John Gihon how someone who's been arrested multiple times and is in the country illegally may have been able to stay for so long.

"I would say sometimes people slip through the cracks," Gihon said. 

It's up to ICE to determine who to deport, he says, and part of that decision-making process takes into consideration the types of crimes the person has committed and capacities at detention facilities.

"If someone isn't arrested, necessarily, for a violent, horrible offense, or they are not convicted of that offense, ICE does not, necessarily, have to detain them," Gihon said. "They don't have the capacity to detain every single person who might be deportable and who is arrested in the state of Florida."

It's now up to a judge to decide Segura-Diaz's future in the U.S.

"In this case specifically, certainly 17 arrests is very significant, and we are fortunate and pleased to get this individual out of our communities," Hoffner said.

According to ICE records, Segura-Diaz remains in custody at a detention facility in Miami.