John Gannon says he deeply regrets his decision to vote for President Trump after his fiancée, an immigrant from Venezuela, was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents last month.
A lifelong Republican and Texas businessman, Gannon, 75, said his plans to marry 45-year-old Yasmin Suarez Reyes were derailed when she was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Houston’s international airport in late July.
“I voted for Trump,” he told CBS News during an interview Wednesday, before criticizing ICE. “They are picking up law-abiding citizens. They’re destroying families, jobs.”
Asked what he would tell Mr. Trump if given the chance to talk to him, Gannon said he would ask the president, “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,” Gannon added.
Gannon said he and Suarez Reyes were planning to travel from Houston to Las Vegas on July 24 for a furniture industry convention. Gannon owns more than 1,000 billboards in the U.S. as well as several establishments in Mexico, including a hotel and a restaurant.
After going through security at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Gannon said his fiancée was arrested by agents in plainclothes.
“After leaving the United room, eight officers, ICE agents swarmed Yasmin and detained her. (They) didn’t tell us why and wrestled her off into a car,” he recounted.
Anne Kennedy, Suarez Reyes’ immigration attorney and another lifelong Republican, said her client was arrested despite entering the U.S. legally, having a pending immigration case and lacking a criminal record.
John Gannon
Government records reviewed by CBS News show Suarez Reyes entered the U.S. legally in October 2023 under the Visa Waiver Program. While Suarez Reyes was born in Venezuela, she holds citizenship in Spain, one of the more than 40 countries whose citizens are eligible to come to the U.S. as tourists or temporary travelers under the visa-free arrangement.
Stays under the Visa Waiver Program generally last for 90 days. But Suarez Reyes applied for asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in January 2024, before that timeframe lapsed, documents show. That asylum case remains pending. Kennedy said her client was able to get a work permit and a Texas driver’s license in the meantime.
Kennedy said Suarez Reyes would also have an avenue to apply for permanent U.S. residency, or a green card, if she were able to marry Gannon, an American citizen.
But because her underlying permission to be in the U.S. expired, Suarez Reyes was detained to be processed for deportation, according to correspondence Kennedy received from ICE.
CBS News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security multiple times to inquire about Suarez Reyes’ case, but has yet to hear back. Earlier this week, ICE’s online detainee tracking system indicated she was being held at the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas.
“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 is one of many immigrants arrested in recent weeks at airports across the country as part of the latest front in the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown. Last month, ICE arrests soared to a record monthly high, in part driven by the airport arrests.
Like Suarez Reyes, many of those arrested as part of ICE’s airport crackdown are in a legal gray area, holding valid work permits and having legal immigration cases pending but still being vulnerable to arrest given the expiration of their status.
Back in Texas, Gannon said he misses his fiancée dearly.
“She’s focused me more on my religious path,” he said, his voice breaking. “I mean, Yasmin’s good as gold.”