Mario Guevara, the Salvadoran journalist who gained recognition by documenting immigration raids, has been deported after spending months in federal custody.
Guevara was deported to his native El Salvador early Friday morning, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) confirmed to NCS, greater than three months after the Spanish-language live-streamer was arrested whereas overlaying an Atlanta-area “No Kings” protest. He was transferred to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention shortly after his arrest.
His deportation comes after the Bureau of Immigration Appeals closed his case on September 19, ordering that he be faraway from the US. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which represents Guevara, filed a temporary restraining order on Monday, however the court docket rejected it earlier this week.
“Journalists should not have to fear government retaliation, including prolonged detention, for reporting on government activity, and showing up to work should not result in your family being torn apart,” Scarlet Kim, senior workers legal professional with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, & Technology Project, said in a statement. “Mario’s treatment should terrify any person in this country that cares about a free press.”
For months, teams together with CPJ and ACLU criticized Guevara’s detention, which continued even after a Georgia immigration choose ordered his release on bond in early July. Dozens of press freedom groups and more than 100 leading writers, journalists and scholars known as for Guevara’s launch from ICE detention.
Although prosecutors dropped prison costs stemming from Guevara’s arrest, figuring out that he had complied with legislation enforcement, the federal government argued that Guevara ought to be stored in detention, alleging his live-streaming of legislation enforcement actions offered a threat to their work.
“The only thing that journalists like Guevara threaten is the government’s chokehold on information it doesn’t want the public to know,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy on the Freedom of the Press Foundation, stated in a statement.
Instead of releasing Guevara, the Board of Immigration Appeals reopened Guevara’s 13-year-old immigration case, which had been closed and approved him to work in the US. The board claimed immigration courts can not approve Guevara’s launch, given his elimination had beforehand been ordered in 2012.
Less than per week after his launch was ordered in July, ICE was granted a stay by an immigration appeals court docket, successfully blocking Guevara’s bond, permitting for his continued detention.
During his time in custody, Guevara was the one identified journalist detained by the US authorities.
“The Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States says ‘with liberty and justice for all,’” Guevara wrote in a September letter revealed by the ACLU. “Right now, that is a fallacy. They should add, ‘except for immigrants.’”
In a piece for MSNBC, Guevara’s son, Oscar, wrote that the journalist “has not always been safe” all through his detention. “Known for his journalism, even by others inside, he has had inmates take photos of him and threaten to hurt him should my family not pay $60 a day,” he wrote. “What else could we do? We paid.”
“Words cannot begin to describe the loss and devastation my family feels,” Oscar Guevera said in a statement the day earlier than Mario’s deportation. “I am in utter shock and disbelief the government has punished my father for simply doing his life’s work of journalism.”
Guevara first entered the US in 2004 on a vacationer visa and utilized for asylum in 2005. He had fled his native El Salvador after receiving death threats over his reporting there.
Reporters Without Borders, which tracks the therapy of journalists globally, noted that “journalists regularly face threats and the seizure of their equipment” in El Salvador. Though no reporter has been killed there since 2016, journalist Víctor Barahona was detained and tortured from June 2022 to May 2023.
The Spanish-language reporter is finest identified for his protection of immigration raids, which he typically live-streams to his hundreds of thousands of followers throughout social media platforms.
During his 21 years in the US, Guevara labored for Mundo Hispánico, Georgia’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, earlier than finally founding MG News in 2024. Guevara’s platform focuses on subjects shut to Georgia’s Latino neighborhood, together with immigration.
Guevara has been nominated for a Southeast Regional Emmy Award on three events — in 2023, 2021, and 2019 — finally profitable in 2021.