A Reporter Disappeared Into ICE Custody. Her Husband Learned She Was Safe While We Were Still on the Phone

By Nick Valencia | March 6, 2026

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE— For more than 48 hours, Alejandro Medina has been living in a kind of suspended reality. His wife, Nashville television reporter Estefany Rodriguez, was taken into federal immigration custody Wednesday morning after agents surrounded their car and pulled her away.

He had spoken to her briefly that day, about two hours after she was detained. Then nothing. No phone calls. No updates. No confirmation of where she had been taken.

So when Medina’s phone buzzed Friday around 4pET while we were in the middle of an interview, he started to trail off and sound distracted.

Then, mid-sentence, he stopped talking.

“Sorry…I hadn’t heard from my wife. And I just got a text message from somebody that’s there with her.”

It was from another detainee, someone Rodriguez had apparently met inside the facility, where she was being held in Alabama.

“She’s okay,” the woman wrote in Spanish, according to Medina. “That’s the first communication I’ve had.”

He still hasn’t spoken directly to his wife since Wednesday morning.

The Arrest

On Wednesday morning, Medina says several vehicles surrounded their car. Agents stepped out and one walked directly to Rodriguez’s window.

“They were like, ‘We’re looking for Stephanie Rodriguez. Stephanie Rodriguez,’” Medina said.

Then, another agent turned to Medina.

“He said, ‘I know you’re her husband. I know that’s your wife. I know you have a pending green card application.’”

Medina told them Rodriguez had an active asylum case. The agents responded that Rodriguez had missed two immigration check-ins. Medina told NVN that explanation makes no sense.

“They said we missed two check-ins,” Medina said. “But when we went there with the lawyer, there was nothing in their system. One of those check-ins was the snow day,” he said. “The office was closed.”

When they showed up after the snow day, to check on Rodriguez’s scheduled appointment, Medina accompanied her immigration attorney to the ICE office in Nashville. Medina said officials told them they couldn’t find any record of it.

“They looked in the system and said, ‘Yeah, no, I don’t see anything about this,’” he recalled. “They were looking at the computer intently for a good little while,” he said.

So Medina asked the obvious question. Do we still need to come Wednesday? According to Medina, the answer was reassuring.

“‘Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t worry about it,’” he said they were told.

Days later, agents arrested Rodriguez anyway.

A Reporter Who Never Meant to Be the Story

Rodriguez has a pending asylum claim rooted in her journalism. She fled Colombia after receiving threats tied to her reporting. Now, she is a familiar face in Nashville where she is a general-assignment television reporter for Nashville Noticias and local Univison 42. She covers whatever happens that day: fires, crashes, community events, neighborhood concerns.

Sometimes those stories involve immigration enforcement. But that was never her beat.

“She was covering the day-to-day,” Medina told me. “Just the day-to-day activities in the city. It was unbiased journalism,” he said. “Just saying the activities that were going on.”

Rodriguez herself never cared much about being a public figure, Medina said. Away from the camera, she was something else entirely: a mother, a homemaker, the center of their household.

“She doesn’t care about people following her,” he said. “She cares about her family.”

At home, Medina says, the reporter audiences see on television disappears. Instead there’s a woman who loves cooking, experimenting in the kitchen, and recreating the foods she grew up with in Colombia.

Sometimes those recipes are the ones her mother used to make, like arepas, the staple Colombian dish that still connects her to home.

“She made my house into a real home,” Medina said.

When Rodriguez and her daughter moved in, Medina’s house, a bachelor pad, transformed.

“She made me get chickens,” he added with a laugh. The chickens, he said, reminded Rodriguez of life back in Colombia.

The two met in late 2024 because of a story Rodriguez was editing.

Medina is a country musician, and Rodriguez’s newsroom had been preparing a piece about him.

Eventually, Rodriguez ended up editing the story. That’s when she first saw him. According to Medina, her reaction in Spanish was immediate.

“Ay, qué cosita,” she said. Soon afterward, the two met in person and bonded quickly. “We’ve been together since November 2024,” he said.

Their plan was simple: build a family together.

“We’re planning to have a lot of kids,” Medina told me.

“I’m Just Trying to Bring My Wife Back”

In the days since Rodriguez was detained, Medina’s phone has barely stopped ringing.

His goal, he says, is simple: make noise.The attention has spread quickly. Members of Congress have shared Rodriguez’s story online and major national outlets have begun calling.

“Historically, public pressure helps,” he said. But Medina says his focus remains smaller.

“My only concern is that my family can regain some kind of normality,” he said.

Still, he says he hasn’t allowed himself to fully process what has happened.

“I’m not trying to feel much right now,” he told me. “I’m trying to focus. The emotions will come later. For now, I’m just trying to do everything I can to bring my wife back.”

Somewhere tonight in Alabama, a Nashville journalist who spent her career telling other people’s stories is waiting to tell her own.