ICE Kidnaps Journalist Who Was Covering Them

Immigration and Customs Enforcement are trying to deport a journalist covering immigration, in one of the most egregious attacks on freedom of speech under Donald Trump’s administration so far, Migrant Insider reported Friday.

Estefany Maria Rodríguez Flores, a reporter who’d been covering a series of immigration raids in Nashville, Tennessee, was headed to the gym with her husband Wednesday when her vehicle was swarmed by federal agents. Her car bore the name of her newsroom, Nashville Noticias.

The agents did not produce a warrant for her arrest, her attorney told Migrant Insider. They simply presented her with a Notice to Appear—the first of many steps toward deportation.

Rodríguez Flores, who entered the country legally in 2021 and later married a U.S. citizen, was in the process of applying for permanent residency. When her recent appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement was canceled and an agent was unable to find her name in the system, she got a handwritten note rescheduling her for a meeting March 17—in less than two weeks.

It wasn’t immediately clear where Rodríguez was taken.

“We don’t know where she is,” her husband, Alejandro, who is still in Tennessee with their child, told Migrant Insider. He hasn’t been able to speak to her since Wednesday.

The ICE detainee locator originally placed her in Alabama, but then she disappeared altogether, the outlet reported. She now appears to have been transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, where detainees have alleged repeated sexual assault.

Rodríguez is a reporter for Nashville Noticias, a local Spanish-language outlet that serves as a lifeline to immigrant communities most affected by the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation scheme. Rodríguez often reported critically on immigration policy, her attorney told Migrant Insider.

Her abduction follows the shocking arrests of former CNN host Don Lemon and local journalist Georgia Fort, who were reporting on a protest at Cities Church in Minnesota. In October, Mario Guevara, an Atlanta-based Spanish-language reporter, was deported after being arrested at a No Kings protest. Guevara’s removal was widely criticized as the first case of a journalist being deported in retaliation for their work under the Trump administration.