\n The agents swarming the car to detain Rodriguez knew a lot about her and her husband, Medina said. They knew he was born in the US, and they knew they had applied for a green card, he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Rodriguez also has a pending political asylum claim and a valid work permit, according to court documents. A spokesperson for ICE told CNN in a statement Rodriguez \u201ccurrently has no lawful immigration status.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cA pending green card application and work authorization does NOT give someone legal status to be in our country,\u201d a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n Rodriguez was at a detention center in Alabama as of Friday before she was set to be sent to Louisiana, according to her lawyer, Joel Coxander.\n <\/p>\n
\n When she worked for a large broadcaster in her home country of Colombia, she reported on government agencies and instances of corruption, her dad Juan Rodriguez and Coxander said.\n <\/p>\n
\n But then she started receiving threats, Juan Rodriguez said. She reported them to the police and the country\u2019s prosecutor\u2019s office, and a security detail was assigned to her for a while, but that later changed to routine check-ins, her father said.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Estefany](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/563da069-6dad-4a61-8c83-504516a7a5a1.JPG\")
<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere are a lot of problems, including armed groups, guerrillas, corrupt politicians. When you report, you\u2019ll find that some of these people don\u2019t like what you\u2019re reporting on, and they\u2019ll get bothered and think they have to get rid of the reporter because the reporter is making too much noise and informing the public,\u201d Juan Rodriguez said.\n <\/p>\n
\n When her daughter turned 1, Estefany Rodriguez decided to try to find safety in the US, he said. She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2021, according to court documents. Before it expired, she applied for political asylum, it said.\n <\/p>\n
\n However, according to ICE, \u201cshe failed to depart the country and is in violation of the conditions of her visa and currently has no lawful immigration status. She will remain in ICE custody pending her immigration proceedings.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n While Coxander said Friday he asked the court to let him amend his initial petition to release Rodriguez to \u201cspecifically address that this is a First Amendment violation and retaliation\u201d for her coverage of ICE activities, the agents said they were detaining her because she had failed to show up for two immigration appointments.\n <\/p>\n
\n Rodriguez received a letter from ICE on January 8 asking her to come to the Nashville field office for \u201cprocessing and additional information,\u201d according to court documents. She and her lawyer collected paperwork and were ready for the appointment, Coxander said, but the city was shut down by an ice storm and the office closed.\n <\/p>\n
\n She soon received a second letter, rescheduling the appointment for February 25, Coxander said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Three days before the rescheduled meeting, Rodriguez\u2019s husband and another attorney visited the ICE office to see if the office could mail the immigration charging documents to Rodriguez\u2019s legal team rather than her appearing in person, the petition said.\n <\/p>\n
\n The lawyer asked the ICE agent directly if she needed to be there on February 25, and the agent said they couldn\u2019t find Rodriguez in their computer system for appointments \u201cand could find no sign of an appointment for her on February 25,\u201d according to the petition. The agent then said Rodriguez should come on March 17 instead, according to Coxander. The agency gave her another notice that had the March 17 date on it.\n <\/p>\n
\n Coxander said it is not apparent there was an arrest warrant at the time and he hasn\u2019t been able to get a copy of one.\n <\/p>\n
\n ICE denies that claim, saying in a statement: \u201cICE officers had an administrative warrant at the time of the arrest and the officers issuing administrative warrants have found probable cause to issue the warrant.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cShe\u2019s a tough person. Obviously, she\u2019s been through a lot and kept being a journalist despite everything that\u2019s happened, and despite, you know, obviously, the inherent risk of just being near ICE and while she\u2019s covering other arrests,\u201d Coxander said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Medina said his wife \u201ccares about her community, and she cares about her job, and she\u2019s really good at it,\u201d adding that her work in journalism is only \u201ca piece of her life.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cShe is a mother, she\u2019s a wife, she\u2019s someone that makes her friends feel close,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nashville journalist Estefany Rodriguez frequently reports on Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, becoming familiar with the sudden arrests…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-509218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}