Trump voter regrets ballot after fiancée's ICE detention at airport

John Gannon was supposed to be in Las Vegas last month. He and his fiancée, Yasmin Suarez Reyes, had booked a trip for late July to attend a furniture industry convention—the kind of ordinary travel plan that millions of Americans make without incident. Gannon, 75, is a lifelong Republican and Texas businessman who owns more than a thousand billboards across the country and runs a hotel and restaurant in Mexico. He had voted for Donald Trump. But on July 24, as they moved through security at Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, everything changed.

After clearing the checkpoint, Gannon watched as eight plainclothes ICE agents surrounded his fiancée. "They didn't tell us why and wrestled her off into a car," he said. Suarez Reyes, 45, a Venezuelan national who holds Spanish citizenship, was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She has been in a physical jail cell ever since, held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, facing deportation.

What makes Gannon's story notable is not just his reversal—though his regret is genuine and vocal. It is the legal status of the woman he was planning to marry. Suarez Reyes entered the United States legally in October 2023 under the Visa Waiver Program, a visa-free arrangement available to citizens of more than 40 countries, including Spain. When her 90-day tourist status was about to expire, she did what immigration law allowed: she filed for asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in January 2024. While that case remained pending, she obtained a work permit and a Texas driver's license. By every measure available to her, she followed the rules.

Yet she was arrested anyway. According to correspondence her attorney received from ICE, Suarez Reyes was to be processed for deportation because her underlying permission to remain in the country had expired—even though she had filed for asylum before that expiration and was legally authorized to work. She exists in what immigration lawyers call a legal gray area: holding valid work authorization, maintaining an active immigration case, and yet vulnerable to arrest because of a technicality in how her status was classified.

Anne Kennedy, Suarez Reyes' immigration attorney and herself a lifelong Republican, has been clear about what happened. "For almost two weeks now, she has been in a physical jail cell, when she has done nothing more than follow the laws of the United States and do what our immigration laws allow her to do," Kennedy said. Suarez Reyes would have had a clear path to permanent residency through marriage to Gannon, an American citizen. That possibility now seems distant.

Gannon's public regret has been sharp and unsparing. "I voted for Trump," he told CBS News. "They are picking up law-abiding citizens. They're destroying families, jobs." When asked what he would say to the president if given the chance, his answer was direct: "What are you doing? Go after the criminals. We're all for that. But leave the mom and pops and the kids alone. Man, he's destroying families." His voice broke when he spoke about missing his fiancée. "She's focused me more on my religious path," he said. "I mean, Yasmin's good as gold."

Suarez Reyes is not alone. She is one of many immigrants arrested in recent weeks at airports across the country as the Trump administration has intensified its deportation enforcement. Last month, ICE arrests reached a record monthly high, driven in significant part by these airport operations. Many of those arrested, like Suarez Reyes, occupy that same legal limbo—work permits in hand, cases pending, yet still subject to detention and removal. The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to requests for comment on her case. She remains in custody, waiting.