Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday that a Colombian reporter for a Spanish-language news outlet in Tennessee who was arrested by federal immigration agents will receive due process.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Nashville News reporter Estefany Maria Rodriguez Flores in the state capital on Thursday. She was taken to an ICE detention center and remains in custody.
ICE charged her with violating the conditions of her visa. Local media quoted one of her attorneys as saying, “So far, ICE has not filed any charges against her.”
Rodriguez Florez, who has lived in the United States for five years, “routinely reported on stories critical of ICE” and said she was arrested without a warrant, her lawyers said in an emergency petition filed in federal court.
Spokespersons for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, the department within ICE, said Friday that ICE officers had an “administrative arrest warrant” at the time of Wednesday’s arrest.
“She will receive full due process and remain in ICE custody pending the outcome of her immigration proceedings,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.
ICE has been at the center of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which rights advocates say violates free speech and due process and creates an unsafe environment. Trump says his policies are aimed at curbing illegal immigration and improving domestic security.
Rodriguez Florez is scheduled to meet with ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations on March 17, her attorney said. ICE had previously rescheduled interviews with her on her case twice, once because of a winter storm and another time because agents couldn’t find her appointment in the system.
The Nashville News said the reporter was outside a gym with her husband on Wednesday when their vehicle bearing the outlet’s logo was surrounded and she was detained.
Rodriguez-Flores arrived in the United States on a tourist visa, applied for political asylum, later married a U.S. citizen and had a valid work permit, her attorney said, adding that she and her husband had applied for permission to adjust their status to lawful permanent residents.
The Trump administration claimed that she was not authorized to stay in the United States after 2021 on a tourist visa.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by William Mallard)