By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, March 6 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday a Colombian reporter for a Spanish-language news outlet in Tennessee, arrested by federal immigration agents, will get due process.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Estefany Maria Rodriguez Florez, a journalist for Nashville Noticias, in the state capital on Thursday. She was taken to an ICE detention center and remains in custody.
ICE accuses her of violating her visa conditions. A lawyer for her was cited by local media as saying that “up until now, she hasn’t had a case with ICE charging her with anything.”
Rodriguez Florez has lived in the U.S. for five years and “frequently reports on stories critical of ICE,” her lawyers said in an emergency petition filed in federal court, saying she was arrested without a warrant.
ICE officers had an “administrative warrant” at the time of the arrest on Wednesday, an ICE spokesperson and a spokesperson of the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, said on Friday.
“She will receive full due process and remains in ICE custody pending the outcome of her immigration proceedings,” the DHS spokesperson said.
ICE has been at the heart of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which rights advocates say violates free speech and due process, and has created an unsafe environment. Trump says his policies aim to curb illegal immigration and improve domestic security.
Rodriguez Florez had a meeting scheduled for March 17 with ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, her lawyers said. ICE previously twice rescheduled a meeting with her on her case, once due to a winter storm and again when an agent could not find her appointment in the system.
Nashville Noticias said the reporter was with her husband outside a gym on Wednesday when the vehicle they were in, which was marked with the media outlet’s logo, was surrounded and she was detained.
Rodriguez Florez arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa, filed for political asylum, later married a U.S. citizen and has a valid work permit, her lawyers say, adding that she and her husband have filed for permission to adjust her status to lawful permanent resident.
The Trump administration alleges she was not authorized to stay in the U.S. beyond 2021 on her tourist visa.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by William Mallard)
