Memo by Rubio Approved Detention of Immigrant Who Criticized Trump Ally

The Trump administration detained a Colombian immigrant this week in Phoenix after he spoke out against a Trump-endorsed candidate in his home country’s upcoming presidential election.

Franklin Humberto Coral Garrido, a progressive online activist known as Beto Coral, is a supporter of President Gustavo Petro of Colombia, a leftist who has clashed with President Trump. He has publicly criticized Abelardo De La Espriella, a right-wing candidate backed by Mr. Trump. Mr. Coral was arrested by immigration authorities on Tuesday, the same day Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo determining that he was deportable from the United States.

In the memo, Mr. Rubio noted that Mr. Coral arrived in the United States in 2015 on a tourist visa and has a pending asylum application. But “Coral Garrido has used his presence in the United States to conduct political activity in support of the Petro government” and has advocated against a candidate for president, Mr. Rubio wrote, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The New York Times.

“Allowing Coral Garrido to remain in the United States,” Mr. Rubio continued, “undermines U.S. foreign policy interests in Colombia’s democratic processes and signals that foreign nationals may use U.S. platforms to conduct politically motivated disinformation campaigns and litigation targeting foreign democratic actors without consequence.”

The memo comes after a year in which Mr. Rubio has used his power as secretary of state to target individual immigrants. In previous memos, he has recommended specific individuals be deported by the Department of Homeland Security, arguing that their continued presence in the United States undermined foreign policy. Most of his memos have centered on immigrants who had protested Israel in some form, including Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University student arrested by immigration authorities last year.

The latest memo appears to be the first time Mr. Rubio has used this authority to recommend the deportation of an activist related to a foreign election.

Kerry Doyle, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer in the Biden administration, views the arrest of Mr. Coral as part of the push to clamp down on speech by immigrants.

“I find it highly ironic but also very troubling that the secretary of state is using Castro-like heavy-handed tactics to quash free speech and protected political activity by leveraging the awesome authority of D.H.S. against perceived opponents who happen to be noncitizens,” said Ms. Doyle, now a partner at Green & Spiegel, an immigration law firm.

Mr. Rubio, a Cuban American, has been a strident critic of Cuba’s repressive government, which came to power nearly 70 years ago under Fidel Castro.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Coral, 40, is originally from Medellín, Colombia. Recently, he has spoken out against Mr. De La Espriella, a former criminal defense lawyer who faces off against a candidate from Mr. Petro’s party, Iván Cepeda, in a runoff election on Sunday.

A political outsider, Mr. De La Espriella’s rise has polarized Colombians. Some have embraced his iron-fisted security message, while others warn he could endanger civil liberties.

Mr. Coral had traveled to Miami days before his arrest, where he and others held up signs discouraging members of the Colombian diaspora from voting for Mr. De La Espriella.

Mr. Coral has said he was also in Miami to file a lawsuit against Mr. De La Espriella. In late May, Mr. Coral submitted a complaint to the F.B.I. accusing the lawyer of illegally recording phone conversations between the two of them and posting the audio online, leading to harassment. Mr. De La Espriella had contacted Mr. Coral on behalf of the former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, who had brought a civil suit accusing Mr. Coral of defamation.

“On a number of occasions, he had contacted Beto so he would retract his statements” concerning Mr. Uribe, said Mr. Coral’s former partner, Tatiana Camacho.

On Tuesday, Mr. Coral was intercepted by ICE officers as he returned to his home in Phoenix with the couple’s 12-year-old son and their dog, Ms. Camacho said. Mr. Coral called Daniel Coronell, a prominent Colombian journalist, who shared a video taken by Mr. Coral, breaking the news of Mr. Coral’s arrest as it was taking place.

“Coral-Garrido entered the country in December 2015 on a B1/B2 visa that would allow him to stay in the country for six months,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “In violation of our nation’s laws, he overstayed his visa for 10 years. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

Gimena Sánchez, the Andes director at the Washington Office on Latin America, said the move was a brazen escalation by the Trump administration. “The message is you cannot oppose, criticize or protest someone who the U.S. government considers to be a close friend,” she said, noting Mr. Coral’s advocacy had not concerned the United States.

Ms. Camacho said in an interview that Mr. Coral had applied for asylum after arriving on a tourist visa more than a decade ago. She said he had shown the arresting officers his asylum application documents and a valid work permit granted by a federal judge. Mr. Coral told her that the officers showed him a “letter” from Mr. Rubio that terminated his work permit and authorized his arrest.

Mr. De La Espriella, the presidential candidate, spent more than a decade in Florida, where he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2023. He represented high-profile Colombian clients, many facing criminal charges in Colombia related to drug trafficking and corruption. He has sued dozens of journalists, whom he often refers to as “activists.”

If elected, he has pledged to “disembowel the left.”

Since he advanced to a second round in Colombia’s election and gained Mr. Trump’s endorsement — along with the vocal support of Republican lawmakers in the United States including Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio — Mr. De La Espriella has told opponents that he will pursue them aggressively with the aid of the United States.

Shortly before Mr. Coral’s arrest, Mr. De La Espriella said on social media that there would be “good news for patriotic Colombians abroad.” He posted images referring to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, who has become known for revoking visas of foreign nationals deemed to be threats to U.S. interests.

Mr. De La Espriella has not directly commented on the arrest and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Coral’s former partner, Ms. Camacho, said that after Mr. Coral was arrested on Tuesday in Phoenix, he had been transferred by authorities to El Paso. On Friday, the system showed he was in Louisiana, she said.

“It’s worrying, to be honest,” she said of his transfers.

Ms. Camacho said that although Mr. Coral sounded desperate by Thursday, the last time the two had spoken, he had not agreed to be deported. A hearing in his case has been set for June 30.

She said Mr. Coral faced risks in his home country because of his political activism and because he was threatened after investigating the death of his father, a police officer who was part of the operation to take down Pablo Escobar, the notorious head of the Medellín Cartel, in the 1990s.

Mr. Coral did not yet have a lawyer, Ms. Camacho said, because he had been moved between jurisdictions.

Mr. Petro responded online with alarm to the news of Mr. Coral’s arrest. He called on Mr. Trump to intervene, pointing to previous complaints that Mr. Coral had made to authorities and claiming the arrest amounted to political “persecution.”

Senator Moreno, in turn, said in a social media post: “You can’t come to the United States, claim asylum, and then act as a foreign agent to that very government while simultaneously undermining our foreign policy. Have a nice life back in Colombia Beto!”