Estefany Maria Rodriguez Florez, a Nashville reporter detained by immigration agents early this month after the government said she had overstayed a tourist visa, was released on a $10,000 bond on Thursday, her legal team said.
Ms. Rodriguez arrived in the country from her native Colombia in 2021 and sought asylum. She applied for a green card earlier this year after marrying an American citizen. She had frequently reported on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown for the Spanish-language outlet Nashville Noticias.
Lawyers for Ms. Rodriguez went to court to challenge her detention, writing in filings that there were indications she had been targeted because of her reporting. They said that in doing so, immigration agents had violated her First Amendment right to free speech.
They have also argued that the agents did not show Ms. Rodriguez a valid warrant. The government has denied the claim, maintaining that Ms. Rodriguez was lawfully arrested and detained. In court filing last week, lawyers for the administration suggested that the First Amendment “may not even be applicable to an illegal alien.” The accusation “is nothing more than a challenge to a discretionary decision to commence removal proceedings,” they wrote.
An immigration judge said on Monday that Ms. Rodriguez could be released on a $10,000 bond, but that she had to remain in detention in Louisiana while the federal government decided whether to appeal . The case challenging the constitutionality of her arrest is continuing, with her lawyers seeking “not only her complete release, but an order prohibiting ICE from mistreating her in a similar way in the future,” said Mike Holley, one of the lawyers.
“We are grateful that Estefany is able to walk away with her freedom to be with her family as she continues to fight for her right to remain in her community and in the US,” Mr. Holley said in a statement on Thursday.
Ahead of her release, her husband, Alejandro Medina III, said he remained “heartbroken and worried” about his wife.
Ms. Rodriguez, 35, is an unusual target for deportation, given that she has no criminal record, an active asylum case and a pending green card application. Under previous administrations, immigrants applying for green cards through their American spouses were not subject to detention, regardless of whether they had overstayed their visas.
Ms. Rodriguez first arrived in the United States in March 2021 on a tourist visa, according to court and government records. After that, she filed for political asylum, saying she had received threats for her work as a journalist in her native Colombia.
While the asylum case moved forward, she successfully applied for a work permit and began reporting for Nashville Noticias in 2022. The outlet serves Middle Tennessee’s Spanish-speaking residents, and she covered an array of community news, as well as immigration-related policy and arrests.
In court documents, Ms. Rodriguez’s lawyers have cited her coverage in late November and December covering “cruel deportations, a construction site raid, and a ‘mass arrest’ of people appearing in traffic court.”
She had reported on such arrests as recently as March 3. A day later, agents stopped her in the parking lot outside of her gym while she was in a vehicle with her husband. Her lawyers have also said that when agents surrounded her car — which had the Nashville Noticias logo on it — they did not show her a valid warrant, a charge the government has denied.
Ms. Rodriguez was quickly transported to Alabama and then to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Basile, La. She was in detention for 16 days.
On Monday, her lawyers told the court that they believe Ms. Rodriguez has “suffered both physically and emotionally” while in custody. They pointed to an incident described to them by Ms. Rodriguez, in which she was put in isolation for five days over concerns that she might have lice. The lawyers said she had been allowed only two calls with them during her time in detention.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security denied that Ms. Rodriguez’s contact with her lawyers had been limited.
“She entered the United States on March 10, 2021, on a tourist visa, which required her to leave the U.S. by September 9, 2021,” the statement said. “In violation of our nation’s laws, she never departed.”
Her detention has drawn outrage from Democratic elected officials and community members in Nashville. Several civic and press freedom groups had also called for her release, with a small coalition directly asking to petition the federal court about First Amendment concerns. The coalition included the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others.
“Non-citizen journalists in the U.S. contribute to the store of knowledge on which the public depends in our constitutional system, and suppression of their disfavored viewpoints through retaliatory arrests and detentions, if unchecked by the courts, would interfere with the public’s access to that information,” the group wrote in a filing.
Jamie McGee contributed reporting.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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