8/17/25, “Unidos con Gio.”

Her name is Giovanna Hernandez.

She came to this country with her family

when she was only seven years old.

She is a beloved local social worker,

¡HICA! volunteer to help Dreamers*,

two-time graduate of Jax State—

detained by ICE after a traffic stop.

The Leeds officer would call the FBI,

who called ICE—for a traffic stop.

They would later release dashcam footage.

Leeds PD claimed she was driving erratically,

[the dashcam footage does not show this claim]

tailgating the arresting officer,

[the dashcam footage does not show this claim]

and speeding  at 80 mph in a 70mph stretch of highway

where no one can drive 65

[they would later change claim she was in excess of 91mph].

What is indisputably visible from the dashcam footage, however:

An Officer and a Brown Shirt fist bump over the prospect of “getting one,”

the one being a pillar of her community who they see as another Pilar;

another brown young woman to lock away inside a USA concentration camp.

Gio, to her friends, as those who know and love her know her as,

has worked for years to gain citizenship, given

the run around by a system built to be a sterile white maze, taken

advantage of by unscrupulous lawyers, fallen

between the cracks when DACA dumped by L’Orange a Schmuck, broken

away from the only world she knows—

out of spite, mistrust, hatred.

We’ve seen this song and dance before.

We saw it goose step out the door,

kicked it in and went to war,

so blind to see the Reichstag already burning.

**Fred Rogers told us to “Look to the helpers” ; not intern them.

the born and bred boogaloo bigots took away the wrong message—

they looked for the helpers and are deporting them as collaborators.**

At City Hall meeting

between the banal of municipal governing

I speak about her case,

knowing there is nothing these council members could do

for her, for her situation, but they will at least know her name,

how she has taken on a shape within

her community, their community, our community;

they should be able to condemn the unconscionable;

could say it aloud with their own voices to be heard;

that was all I asked—

Afterward, citizens and councilors alike

thanked me for the words.

They didn’t know

she was a JSU graduate, one of their own community.

The hole ICE tore not yet directly felt.

They thank the words,

and we wait still for action.

-Johnny Byutorie