WRN: “So you don’t want to answer whether he ever overstayed a visa?”
Rodriguez: “No.” (full transcript is presented later in story with video/audio)
Democrat governor Candidate Sara Russell Rodriguez wants to have it both ways. She is specifically running on her husband’s immigration story and using it as a cudgel in the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary, but she won’t fully explain it. She has opened the door three times, even painting her family (and herself) as a target of ICE. “I am one of those targets,” the lieutenant governor even said previously, before walking it back. Wait, what? ICE was targeting the Wisconsin lieutenant governor? Seems like a story.
At Monday’s Democrat forum in Pewaukee, Rodriguez again used her husband’s immigration story to pull at heartstrings and generate anger at Republicans; she said that her juvenile son expressed fear about Trump being elected because he worried that the president “would ask his father go back to Mexico.” What she won’t say is whether there was ever any rational reason for that governmental scrutiny and interest, if it really occurred at all. And what she knew about it.
So Wisconsin Right Now walked through the door Rodriguez opened and asked her, to her face, the questions that the media won’t. The public deserves the full story. Wisconsin Right Now’s Jessica McBride asked Rodriguez whether her husband was EVER in this country illegally, and she revealed, for the first time, that he “came here legally” and repeated what she has said before: “He’s a U.S. citizen right now.” But she refused THREE TIMES to say whether he overstayed a visa.
Notice the careful semantics. Wisconsin Right Now asked whether he was EVER in this country illegally, not just how he came here or what his status is now. She eventually walked away. Overstaying a visa amounts to unlawful presence in the U.S., and there can be penalties. “Overstaying a visa, whether a tourist, student, or work visa constitutes a civil violation of U.S. immigration law under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),” wrote BG Law Group. “It may result in: Removal (deportation) proceedings, Inadmissibility bars (e.g., 3-year or 10-year bans on reentry), Ineligibility for certain immigration benefits.”
Rodriguez previously said that her husband became a naturalized citizen during the first Trump administration. He came to the U.S. many years before that; they have been married for 20 years.
Voters can decide how much weight to give it all, if any. We aren’t asking you how to assess it. We just believe voters deserve the fuller story, if she’s going to bring it up and use the story to create support for liberal immigration policies. And we believe she should answer questions forthrightly and with honesty.
We recorded the conversation (which she was aware of; she pointed it out) so we could quote her accurately because precise language here matters a great deal. Why does this question matter? Because she’s repeatedly used her husband’s immigration story as the foundation for her lax policy positions against illegal immigrants, even those who commit violent crimes (for example, she opposes local law enforcement cooperating with ICE to place detainers on violent illegal immigrants in Wisconsin jails absent a judicial warrant, for example.) She also wants to endanger federal agents by forcing them to show their identities and faces to rioters.
Here’s the full transcript and audio:
WRN (after giving my name): “Let’s drive a stake in the questions about your husband. Was he ever in this country illegally?”
Rodriguez: “Well, you know, he came here legally. He’s a US citizen right now.”
WRN: “Did he overstay a visa?”
Rodriguez: “You know what, I appreciate the question, but when we start doing that, when we start asking those questions, it becomes over and over and over again about -”
WRN: “It’s a simple question. Yes or no, did he overstay a visa?”
Rodriguez: “I mean, but we’re not. I’m running for office, right? I mean and – ”
WRN: “You brought him up. I think it’s a fair question.”
Rodriguez: “I don’t know that’s a fair question.”
WRN: “You brought him up in the context of immigration.”
Rodriguez: “That’s what you’re doing right here right? I mean, you’re doing a thing, you know.” (Points to fact I’m recording.)
WRN: “You brought him up. It’s a forum.”
Rodriguez: “Yeah, it’s a forum.”
WRN: “So you don’t want to answer whether he ever overstayed a visa?”
Rodriguez: “No.”
WRN: “Okay.”
Rodriguez: “Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of like, he’s not running for office. I’m running for office.”
WRN: “You brought him up. You brought him up.”
She then walked away.
Here’s the video and audio:
— Wisconsin Right Now (@wisconsin_now) June 24, 2026
How Sara Rodriguez Opened the Door to Questions on Her Husband’s Immigration Status
Rodriguez has opened the door to this question many times. She brought her husband into the campaign.
1. A year ago, shortly after announcing her run for governor, she suddenly revealed, without being asked, that a reporter (whose name she blacked out) had asked her in July whether her husband, Baltazar Rodriguez, was “undocumented.” She called the question racist. “Yesterday, reporters got a ‘tip’ that my husband is undocumented. Spoiler: he’s a proud, naturalized U.S. citizen. We are five days into this race and my opponents are already resorting to racist, made-up attacks about my family,” Rodriguez wrote.
But she didn’t say whether he was ever in the country illegally. This appeared to be an attempt to shut down the line of questioning on the front end of her campaign. She has refused to release this reporter’s name and wouldn’t respond to our later questions about Baltazar’s immigration history, which we first asked months later when she started to use his story amid discussing her policy positions on immigration.
2. At a forum last year, Rodriguez said ICE had targeted her and her family and brought up her husband’s immigration story. “It is personal to me. My husband is a naturalized citizen from Mexico. I have children, and we speak Spanish outside the house. I am one of those targets. I stand with immigrants…” she said before later walking it somewhat back.
3. In a subsequent interview with AJ Bayatpour of CBS 58, Rodriguez, in the words of Bayatpour, “said her husband is a naturalized citizen and added she was not concerned his immigration history would become a campaign issue.”
“He’s a naturalized citizen,” she told him. “[President Donald] Trump signed his citizenship papers within his first administration, so no.” Again, she didn’t explain whether he was ever in this country illegally.
4. In a press release, she again relied on her husband’s immigration story to make her case to voters, writing, “Baltazar Rodriguez is a first-generation immigrant from Mexico who became a naturalized U.S. citizen after coming to this country to build a better life.”
5. During Monday’s forum, Rodriguez told the audience: “Prior to 2016, I paid attention. I voted, I maybe threw a couple dollars at a candidate that inspired me but I wasn’t as involved. That changed when my 8 year old son came to me worried about what would happen if Trump won. He asked me if he would ask his father go back to Mexico, and it broke my heart that that man’s words had gotten into my child’s head, and that’s when I decided that I was going to get more involved. When Trump won for the second time, I told my naturalized citizen husband to keep his passport card in his wallet, and I’m the lieutenant governor of the state of Wisconsin, so i just want to acknowledge the fear.”
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