Students who showed up for a sold-out power vinyasa class in Wynwood on Saturday found an empty studio instead of their teacher. Johan Blanco, a 44-year-old yoga instructor from Venezuela, was reportedly detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that day, according to a fundraiser launched on his behalf.
The GoFundMe campaign, titled “Support Johan Blanco's Fight for Freedom,” was created by organizer Alanna Taylor within a day of the arrest, as reported by Miami New Times. It set a $40,000 goal to cover legal fees, family support, and other detention-related costs, and as of Monday it had already blown past that mark, raising more than $40,700. Blanco's exact holding location remains unclear, and as of Monday he had not yet appeared in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, which lists people currently in immigration custody or those released within the past 60 days.
That absence from the database is not unusual on its own. Immigration attorneys note that the locator system typically runs 24 to 72 hours behind an arrest, since detainee names can take several days to appear while individuals are held at local field offices, transit hubs, or booking centers, according to Lincoln-Goldfinch Law. Reporting from EL PAÍS has similarly found that South Florida detainees are often held for multiple days in short-term processing cells at ICE's Miramar sub-office before being transferred to regional facilities such as Krome.
A Decade-Long Fixture in Miami's Yoga Scene
Blanco moved to Miami in 2015 and built a following in the city's wellness community, with more than 24,000 Instagram followers tracking his classes. He began his yoga journey in 2008 and, before relocating to South Florida, taught hatha yoga at embassies in Venezuela. In Miami he specialized in power vinyasa, a fast-paced, more athletic style of practice, teaching at Mimi Yoga's Wynwood location.
Mimi Yoga, the studio where Blanco was scheduled to teach Saturday's class, is a popular Miami yoga and pilates studio founded in Wynwood in October 2022 by international instructor Mimi Ghandour at 278 NW 27th Street. The studio, which began as online Instagram Live sessions during the pandemic before expanding into physical locations in Wynwood, Coconut Grove, and Aventura, has become a fixture of Miami's fitness scene — Ghandour recently featured at Miami's first Faces of Fitness Festival at Regatta Park, in a Dwyane Wade-headlined Regatta Park event. The fundraiser describes Blanco as a community pillar and “a light in the lives of everyone who knows him,” and says he has served as a mentor, healer, and friend to his students.
Part of a Wider Pattern Across South Florida
Blanco's detention lands amid a sharp rise in ICE actions against Venezuelan nationals across South Florida, home to roughly 254,000 people of Venezuelan origin within the greater Miami metro area, out of about 1.2 million nationwide as of 2024 — a 119% increase in the U.S. Venezuelan population since 2019, according to Pew Research Center. That growth has coincided with the unraveling of legal protections: in June, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the federal government to terminate Temporary Protected Status designations for multiple nations, following 2025 Department of Homeland Security action ending Venezuela's TPS status, which had previously shielded more than 600,000 nationals from deportation.
Florida has also expanded its own enforcement powers. Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bills 2-C and 4-C into law in February 2025, creating state criminal penalties for unauthorized entry into Florida and mandatory minimum sentences for unauthorized reentry, building on 2023's Senate Bill 1718, which restricted out-of-state driver's licenses and mandated E-Verify usage, per Greenspoon Marder LLP. Local police agencies have increasingly fed encounters into that system, too — a small Miami Springs department alone has logged hundreds of administrative immigration encounters through routine traffic stops.
Blanco's case is one of several Hoodline has tracked in the region this month. Days before Blanco's detention, a Venezuelan man was taken into ICE custody in Coconut Creek following a traffic stop while his wife battled cancer, and a Venezuelan soccer player was reported stuck in a Georgia ICE cell, missing his daughter's birthday despite an active visa extension filing. Krome North Service Processing Center in West Miami-Dade, which houses an on-site immigration court and has a standard capacity of 450 detainees, has been a common landing point for men detained across the region, including an Argentine midfielder pulled off a flight at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport this month.
Families increasingly turn to federal courts when local channels stall. Nationwide, federal courts received more than 24,000 habeas corpus petitions from detained immigrants between January 2025 and March 2026, as defense attorneys lean on civil filings to challenge prolonged custody and delayed bond hearings, according to ProPublica. Whether Blanco's legal team will pursue a habeas petition or a bond hearing before an immigration judge remains an open question, as does the precise circumstances that led to his arrest.
ICE did not respond to an emailed request for comment from Miami New Times, which first reported the detention and noted that the story was still developing and would be updated as events warranted. For now, Blanco's Wynwood students are left waiting — and giving.
