Journalist Arrested By Ice Doesn’t Have First Amendment Rights, According To Trump’s Doj

A journalist successful Nashville who was arrested by migration officers earlier this month argues that nan national authorities violated her First Amendment authorities by “retaliating” against her reporting connected nan section impacts of Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

Lawyers for nan Department of Justice, however, declare she has nary specified law rights.

Nashville Noticias newsman Estefany Rodriguez Florez, who is primitively from Colombia, was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers connected March 4 while successful a gym parking batch wrong a car stamped pinch her network’s logo.

Her apprehension — which sparked widespread outrage from property state groups and free reside advocates — amounts to unconstitutional “retaliation” for “exercising her First Amendment authorities arsenic a journalist reporting connected ICE enforcement activities,” according to her attorneys.

But successful their response connected Tuesday, lawyers pinch nan U.S. nan Attorney's Office successful Tennessee reason that nan Supreme Court has ne'er “explicitly ruled that undocumented immigrants aliases forbidden aliens person protections nether nan First Amendment.”

Government lawyers said her attorneys “incorrectly represent” that she “clearly has First Amendment rights.”

“Neither history nor precedent indicates that nan First Amendment definitively applies to forbidden aliens,” they wrote.

Rodriguez Florez legally entered nan U.S. connected a tourer visa successful 2021 and is joined to a U.S. citizen. She has a seven-year-old daughter.

She applied for asylum aft fleeing threats against her arsenic a journalist successful her autochthonal Colombia, and she besides has applied for a greenish paper for lawful imperishable position aft marrying her hubby Alejandro Medina.

With a activity permit, Rodriguez Florez reported for Nashville Noticias on nan authorities of nan Trump administration’s “immigration nightmare,” her attorneys wrote successful tribunal filings.

She alleges that nan authorities “retaliated against her for her past protected reside and successful bid to forestall aliases chill nan early reside of herself and different journalists who study critically connected ICE,” according to her attorneys.

In January, Rodriguez Florez received an unexpected announcement to look astatine an ICE office, what she believed was a precursor to unit her asylum declare done migration tribunal alternatively than coming her lawsuit done her U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services interviews while pursuing a greenish card.

When she showed up, nan ICE agency was closed for a snowstorm that day, according to her attorneys.

The adjacent clip she appeared, she was provided a statement from an supplier who could not find her sanction successful nan system, and rescheduled her adjacent assignment to March 17, according to tribunal filings.

She was arrested March 4 and held wrong a region jailhouse successful Alabama.

ICE scheduled to alert her to a detention halfway successful Louisiana nan adjacent day, but she was forced backmost to nan section jailhouse by an serviceman who was suspicious she had lice, which she did not, according to documents filed by her attorneys connected Monday.

She was held successful isolation for 5 days and forced to portion naked successful a ablution while an serviceman “poured immoderate benignant of chemic liquid connected her head, which seemed to beryllium thing utilized to cleanable floors and burned her eyes,” according to her attorneys.

A female assisting her successful nan ablution “cried to spot nan abuse,” attorneys wrote.

On Monday, an migration tribunal judge granted her merchandise from custody connected $10,000 bond, an unusually precocious sum, but she remains detained while ICE considers an appeal.

“The First Amendment intelligibly protects nan past and early reside of Rodriguez, who entered this state lawfully, who has developed important connections to nan organization by domiciled present for 5 years and by marrying a U.S. citizen, and who useful arsenic a journalist, some informing organization members and helping their stories scope nan nationalist discourse,” according to her attorneys.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said she should beryllium released “without delay.”

“The Department of Homeland Security and its affiliates are progressively being utilized to constabulary First Amendment rights, including state of nan press. Rodriguez’s apprehension is nan latest illustration successful a troubling pattern,” said Katherine Jacobsen, nan group’s U.S., Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator.

Medina, her husband, said he’s “heartbroken.”

“I’m hoping and praying Estefany comes location soon and we’re capable to proceed for her to go a imperishable resident and yet a citizen,” he told reporters Monday.

“I person nan aforesaid dream and dream for everyone crossed nan state who is successful a akin business pinch a loved 1 that is unjustly detained aliases who has been deported,” he said. “Our families beryllium together and this surgery migration strategy has profoundly harmed thousands upon thousands of families crossed nan country.”

The Independent has requested remark from Homeland Security.