Guatemalan woman held at Knox County Jail amid Tennessee investigation
Aug 4, 2026·Location: Knoxville, TN
Country of origin: Guatemala

ICE arrested three Guatemalan nationals—Magdalena Gomez-Garcia, Elias Gomez-Garcia, and Eulalia Ordonez-Carmelo—in Tennessee following an investigation into alleged fraudulent use of stolen identities and Social Security numbers. All three had final orders of removal; Magdalena Gomez-Garcia is accused of using a stolen identity belonging to a New York resident to obtain employment in Tennessee beginning in February 2026, which reportedly caused the victim to repeatedly contact authorities after wages were misattributed to her Social Security number. Magdalena Gomez-Garcia, who entered the U.S. in Arizona in 2018 and was ordered deported in absentia in 2019, was booked into the Knox County Jail as a U.S. Marshals Service inmate on August 5. Elias Gomez-Garcia had prior traffic offenses in Kentucky and South Carolina and was previously deported in 2009, 2011, and 2018, while Ordonez-Carmelo entered the country in March 2022 and was later released into the interior by a federal judge in 2023.
Sources
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