Attorneys representing Estefany Rodriguez Flores, the Colombian journalist arrested in Nashville last month after allegedly overstaying a tourist visa and missing two appointments with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), on Tuesday argued their client technically remains in federal custody, citing a filing acknowledging her driver’s license may be temporarily in the custody of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
Filed in her habeas corpus lawsuit over her detention by ICE, the attorneys made their argument in a reply submitted after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a declaration by an ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) employee, who confirmed communicating with Rodriguez Flores’ legal representatives about the status of her personal documents, including a driver’s license.
Rodriguez Flores claimed in an earlier filing that various personal are being withheld, and according to the declaration by an ICE-ERO employee, a member of her legal team named Joel Coxander contacted ERO Nashville on the evening of March 23, requesting her Employment Authorization Document (EAD), Colombian passport, and American driver’s license be returned.
The ICE-ERO agent, identified in the Monday declaration as Paul Gray, confirmed that he replied to Coxander’s request the following afternoon.
“Can you confirm if she received her property when she was released?” Gray explained that he told Coxander, “If the ids were not in her property they will be with the file which gets sent to USCIS as they control the files. We will have to have the files sent back to us for us to retrieve the documents.”
The declaration states Rodriguez Flores’ attorney did not respond to Gray’s message, but Coxander is among the attorneys who signed the subsequent legal filing, which references the document.
In that filing, Rodriguez Flores’ attorneys described Gray’s declaration as “meaningless” and told the court should be tossed, or else be subject to an evidentiary hearing, but simultaneously said its acknowledgment that her documents could be held by a federal agency is evidence of her ongoing “custody” despite her release from detention.
While the DOJ has argued that the habeas corpus lawsuit should be dismissed as moot, Rodriguez Flores’s filing argues the withholding of her documents fits the legal definition of custody and that the court could still order their return to restore her to her position before she was detained in March.
Rodriguez Flores has argued she was detained due to her critical coverage of ICE, including a video purportedly released days before her arrest, which she claimed in a legal filing contained “recognizable faces” that could be used to identify individual ICE officers.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Estefany Rodriguez Flores” by Estefany Rodriguez Flores.
