Press freedom groups on Friday filed an amicus brief in support of a journalist who has been in ICE detention in Georgia for more than 100 days.
Mario Guevara, a Spanish- language journalist originally from El Salvador, faces imminent deportation in a case lawyers and advocates say violates the First Amendment.
“Mario is the only journalist in the United States jailed for his reporting,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and the director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press, told Scripps News. “This is so antithetical to the way the U.S. was founded, to the ways that the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment were created. This is exactly the situation the First Amendment intended and was written to protect against.”
Guevara was arrested in June while livestreaming at a No Kings protest against the Trump administration. Prior to the arrest, Guevara had been livestreaming ICE roundups in the Atlanta, Georgia, area for months.
His lawyers are currently seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent what they fear is a fast-tracked deportation. His legal team has argued the government is retaliating against him for his reporting on ICE activity, violating his First Amendment rights and due process protections.
"Unfortunately, it is rhetoric and messaging and action that we have seen increasingly from this administration that tries to equate livestreaming and just generally witnessing what DHS officers are doing when engaged in their duties in public, that is somehow violence or harassment or unlawful,” ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Vera Eidelman, one of his attorneys, told Scripps News.
Guevara's legal team has urged the government to immediately release him as he now faces what they say is imminent deportation. His lawyers said they’ve received notice from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) that an order of final removal had been issued for Guevara. In a comment to Scripps News, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which houses the BIA, said it “does not comment on cases before the agency.”
Federal prosecutors, who previously argued Guevara was placed in deportation proceedings because of a criminal record, now say he remains in detention due to his immigration status.
After Guevara was first arrested by local police in June, he faced charges of unlawful assembly, obstruction, and being a pedestrian on the roadway. While those charges against him were dropped and an immigration judge later ordered his release on bond, he remained in detention after ICE opened a detainer against him.
"The government has consistently argued to the immigration courts that he has to stay in detention specifically because his live streaming of law enforcement activity is somehow dangerous,” Eidelman said. “Not because of any immigration violations, not because he's a flight risk, but because live streaming in their view is sufficiently dangerous to justify keeping someone in detention.”
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In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “Mario Guevara is in the country illegally,” stating he was given a final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2012.
However, his lawyers said that while Guevara, who entered the country lawfully in 2004 on a work visa, was granted voluntary departure in 2012, he appealed the decision and his case was closed, which legally allowed him to remain in the U.S.
"We have to make sure that we know about cases like Mario's because he's not famous the same way that Jimmy Kimmel is, but the stories that he provides the local community in Atlanta are essential to people understanding what's happening, feeling safe, knowing what our government is doing. And that's the very reason that he has been targeted,” Benavidez told Scripps News.
Guevara, who celebrated his 48th birthday on Thursday while in detention, confronted his potential deportation in a handwritten letter shared by the ACLU.
“I know I am about to be deported from this country, a country I have loved and respected for more than two decades,” Guevara wrote in the letter. “Life is not always fair. If I am deported, I will leave with my head held high, because I am convinced it will be for doing my work as a journalist and not for committing crimes."
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