The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has postponed the release of a Nashville journalist by a day.
Estefany Rodríguez, a Spanish-language journalist associated with Nashville Noticias and and its Spanish counterpart Univision 42 Nashville, will spend another night in ICE detention after her husband failed to secure her release owing to technical difficulties jamming the government’s electronic bail-posting system.
Rodríguez’s husband, Alejandro Medina, will travel to Memphis on Thursday, March 19, to post $10,000 in bond money for her release.
Rodríguez was reportedly arrested by federal agents on March 4 at a traffic stop after she dropped off her 7-year-old daughter at school. She was accompanied by her husband at the time. It has been two months since her arrest.
Prior to her arrest, the journalist had been reporting exclusively on local ICE raids in recent months.
BREAKING UPDATE ‼️ Attorneys for Estefany Rodríguez Flores, a journalist with Nashville Noticias and Univision 42, say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained her after claiming she missed two immigration interviews and considered her a flight risk.
Read the full… pic.twitter.com/7SOnoYUIoB
— FoxNashville (@FOXNashville) March 6, 2026
Rodríguez came to the U.S. almost five years ago and holds a valid work permit. She initially arrived on a tourist visa and then filed an asylum petition before her tourist visa expired. She cited threats she had received for reporting on government corruption in her native Colombia.
She also applied for legal permanent status for being married to a U.S. citizen.
Her employer agency condemned her detention in a statement and said, “(ICE agents) demanded that our colleague be taken into custody for reasons that the legal team will specify at a later date.”
“Estefany Rodriguez was taken to a detention center. She joined the Nashville Noticias team in 2022, covering social, family, health, police and immigration issues,” the statement added.
Rodríguez’s lawyers had filed a lawsuit on the count of unlawful arrest and urged for an immediate release and restricting ICE from interfering with her freedom of speech. The legal team also stated that she had been arrested without any proper warrant.
However, ICE lawyers have claimed that Rodriguez’s detention is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment because agents presented a warrant at the time of her arrest.
Rodríguez’s lawyers further argued, saying that the jailers restricted her contact with her attorney.
They stated, “Rodriguez was transported to a county jail in Etowah, Alabama. She was held in that jail from Wednesday, March 4, through Thursday, March 12.”
WSMV— NASHVILLE NOTICIAS reporter Estefany Rodriguez, who reported on ICE, detained by ICE🤔. They claim she missed 2 appointments but 1 was during the ice storm, another they gave her bad info.
Her husband is a citizen, she’s on a Green card path.
Full: https://t.co/7ARMgCEy0W pic.twitter.com/HSf8AOCcxF
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) March 6, 2026
“The Etowah jailers refused to set up an attorney-client call between Rodriguez and counsel, saying that they simply do not do attorney calls,” the lawyers said.
Following an initial hearing on Tuesday, March 17, she was scheduled to be released on bond early Wednesday (March 18).
In the lawsuit, her lawyers seek the extent of her confinement under ICE surveillance and conditions of her release that challenge her liberty, such as ankle monitoring. U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson has yet to set the conditions.
Mercedes Maynor-Falcoun, an assistant U.S. attorney, is seeking dismissal of the lawsuit.
She argues the immigration case is not within the competence of the federal court since it is yet to be appealed to an immigration appeals court.
Falcoun also argued that Rodríguez’s release would nullify the claim that her detention was illegal.
She said on March 17 that the court is yet to decide whether she is entitled to First Amendment rights. “I haven’t seen we’ve gotten past the initial hurdle of whether an undocumented illegal alien (is) entitled to that,” Falcoun claimed.
