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Estefany Rodríguez, the Nashville Spanish-language news reporter arrested by ICE, was granted a $10,000 bond Monday but remains detained in Louisiana after government lawyers reserved their right to appeal, according to her attorney.

Joel Coxander, Rodríguez’ attorney, said she has been subject to “inhumane and difficult treatment” since her arrest in Nashville by ICE agents on March 4. 

Rodríguez, 35, was unable to communicate with Coxander between the day of her arrest until this past weekend, creating a “very difficult situation when you’re trying to defend her rights as a journalist and to fight for her,” Coxander told reporters Monday. 

She was detained first in a county jail in Etowah, Alabama and scheduled to be flown the next day to Louisiana. But she was returned back to the jail by an officer examining detainees’ scalps grew suspicious she had lice, according to documents filed by her attorneys in federal court Monday.

After being held in isolation for about five days. Rodríguez was forced to strip naked in a shower while an officer “poured some kind of chemical liquid on her head, which seemed to be something used to clean floors and burned her eyes,” the filing read.

A woman assisting Rodríguez in the shower “cried to see the abuse,” it read.

Court orders ICE to justify arrest of Nashville journalist 

Attorneys for Rodríguez have alleged that she was arrested in retaliation for her work as a journalist reporting on local ICE activities and have petitioned a federal court for her immediate release. 

They have asked the court to enjoin immigration officials from taking any enforcement actions in “retaliation against her past speech or to chill her future speech.”

And they have challenged the arrest itself as unconstitutional, alleging it took place without a warrant. 

A hearing in the case has been set for Tuesday. 

“Estefany’s case is important not because it is unique but because it highlights the cruel and violent crackdown against our neighbors with the current mass deportation agenda we have been fighting against,” Coxander said Monday.

Government attorneys said Rodríguez illegally overstayed a tourist visa then missed two scheduled immigration appointments earlier this year.  They have denied Rodríguez was subject to a warrantless arrest, producing in court a document they allege is a valid and timely warrant.

Rodríguez came to the United States five years ago on a tourist visa then applied for asylum as a result of threats she faced as a working journalist in her native Colombia, her attorneys wrote in court filings. The asylum claim is still pending, they said.

Rodríguez in January also applied for a green card through her marriage to an American citizen, the attorneys said. She has no criminal history, they noted. She has a seven-year-old daughter.

Of the two immigration appointments scheduled, the first was cancelled due to an ice storm in Nashville and the second was rescheduled until March 17, court filings show.

Attorneys for Rodríguez noted that she had no contact with ICE until after she had been regularly reporting for several months on Nashville-area immigration arrests, and their impact on families left behind.

Then, in January, she unexpectedly received notice to appear in an ICE office, a clear precursor to forcing her asylum claim through immigration court rather than letting her present it through a United States Citizenship and Immigration Services interview.

Alejandro Medina, Rodríguez’ husband, also addressed reporters Monday after his wife’s bond hearing in Louisiana. 

“As a heartbroken and worried husband, I’m hoping and praying Estefany comes home soon and we’re able to proceed for her to become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen,” Medina said. 

“I have the same hope and prayer for everyone across the country who is in a similar situation with a loved one that is unjustly detained or who has been deported,” he said. “Our families belong together and this broken immigration system has deeply harmed thousands upon thousands of families across the country.”

In addition to Coxander, an attorney with MIRA Legal, Rodríguez is represented by Michael Holley, Julio Colby and Spring Miller with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.

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