A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by a Papilion man who says he was unlawfully detained and wrongly treated as an illegal immigrant by Sarpy County officials. A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday agreed with a lower federal court that Ramon Mendoza’s constitutional rights were not violated.
Mendoza sued the Sarpy County sheriff, jail staff, and federal immigration agent for being jailed in March 2010 after he was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy for a traffic infraction.
Mendoza is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico, but was held for days on suspicion of being in the country illegally.
