A Texas businessman who voted for Trump in 2024 says he now regrets that decision after immigration officers arrested his fiancée at a Houston airport last month, detaining her as the couple set out for a business convention.
John Gannon, a 75-year-old businessman and lifelong Republican, spoke out after his fiancée, Yasmin Suarez Reyes, 45, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in July. She remains held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, facing removal proceedings, CBS News reported.
Gannon’s turn against the administration he supported is the heart of the story — a self-described lifelong Republican and Trump voter confronting immigration enforcement not as a policy in the abstract, but as the officers who took his fiancée away in front of him.
Gannon described the arrest to CBS News as sudden and unexplained.
“After leaving the United room, eight officers, ICE agents, swarmed Yasmin and detained her,” he said. “They didn’t tell us why and wrestled her off into a car.”
The couple had been traveling to a furniture convention in Las Vegas when Suarez Reyes was detained. Gannon, who owns more than 1,000 billboards across the United States and businesses in Mexico, said the experience had upended his view of the administration’s enforcement drive.
“They’re picking up law-abiding citizens. They’re destroying families, jobs,” he told CBS News, according to Newsweek.
He drew a sharp line between the enforcement he says he supported and what he witnessed. “Go after the criminals. We’re all for that. But leave the mom and pops and the kids alone,” Gannon said. “Man, he’s destroying families.”
Asked whether he stood by his support for the president, Gannon did not hesitate. “I wouldn’t do that again, not after this fiasco,” he said.
He added that if he ever had the chance to speak with the president directly, he would ask him what he was doing.
According to the account CBS reported, Suarez Reyes entered the United States legally in October 2023 under the Visa Waiver Program, using an ESTA authorization available to her through her dual citizenship in Spain, a participating country, and Venezuela. That program allows visitors to stay for 90 days without a visa.
She remained in the country beyond that window and applied for asylum in January 2024. The pending application allowed her to obtain a work permit and a Texas driver’s license while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviewed her case. It was during that period — with an asylum claim pending and a work permit in hand — that she was arrested at the airport, Newsweek reported.
The Department of Homeland Security defended the detention. A DHS spokesperson told Newsweek that Suarez Reyes legally entered on October 24, 2023, but overstayed a lawful admission that expired on January 19, 2024, and that pending immigration applications “do not confer legal status.” The department said an immigration judge will hear her claims.
Gannon’s account is one of a growing number involving the spouses and partners of U.S. citizens who entered the country with legal status and have applications pending, only to be detained by federal agents.
ICE has increasingly focused its efforts at airports, targeting travelers whose status falls into a gray area, such as a pending asylum application that comes with a work permit but, in the government’s view, no full legal status.
Immigration attorneys and advocates have criticized that approach, arguing that agents are pursuing people who are relatively easy to locate precisely because they have followed the rules and registered with the system, to raise detention numbers. DHS maintains that people in this situation never had lawful status and that judges will decide their cases.
Suarez Reyes remains at the Conroe facility while her case proceeds.
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Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation software, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
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