Armed agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Colombian journalist Estefany Rodríguez, who worked for Nashville Noticias and Univision 42, despite being married to a U.S. citizen, her husband and local media reported Friday.
Officers in several vehicles stopped Estefany Rodriguez on Wednesday while she was traveling in her car, bearing the Nashville Noticias logo, with her husband, Alejandro Medina III, according to a statement issued by the Hispanic media outlet in the southern state of Tennessee, where it has more than 800,000 followers on Facebook.
ICE arrests Univision journalist
The husband denounced that his wife “is being detained after being arrested by eight armed agents,” who alleged that the woman was supposed to show up for two appointments, but the letter for one of the summons did not appear in the system, while the storm that hit the U.S. this winter prevented the other, according to Medina III.
For this reason, the Colombian woman’s legal defense filed a petition before the Federal Court, arguing that her detention violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, for having been carried out without an arrest warrant and without evidence that she was a flight risk, as ICE argued.
“At this time I ask for your prayers for my wife and our family and thank you, the community, for your support as we deal with this injustice resulting from a fragmented system,” said her husband, who opened a GoFundMe petition to raise funds for her defense.
Estefany Rodriguez, who is now in a detention center, has a degree in journalism from Colombia, where she worked for years in various media outlets before joining Nashville Noticias in 2022 to cover immigration, social, health and police issues.
The media outlet describes her as a communicator “known in the community for her storytelling, empathy and love for her family and her 8-year-old daughter.”
Rodriguez’s arrest followed the October deportation of Salvadoran journalist Mario Guevara, detained in June 2025 in Georgia while covering a protest against President Donald Trump, and immigration raids despite identifying himself as press.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA), in its latest semi-annual report on the U.S., documented that, “in his second term as president, Donald Trump has waged direct attacks on the national media, fueling an avalanche of lawsuits and rhetorical attacks, and emboldening federal agencies.”
With information from EFE
