Mario Guevara, an Emmy award-winning, Spanish-language journalist who has served Atlanta’s Latino community for over two decades, will be deported Friday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to his family.
Guevara’s deportation seemed all but certain after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denied his emergency motion to block his deportation on Oct. 1. (You can read the details here.) Guevara asked the 11th Circuit to reconsider on Thursday, but that too was denied.
Guevara’s son, Oscar Guevara, announced that his father would be deported to El Salvador in a Facebook live stream on Thursday. Guevara is authorized to work in the United States while his green card application is pending. He has been incarcerated for 111 days since he was arrested in DeKalb County while live-streaming a “No Kings” protest on June 14. The DeKalb Sheriff’s Office handed him over to ICE on June 18.
DeKalb prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor obstruction charges against Guevara and a federal immigration judge granted him bond in early July, but ICE appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals – and, in an unusual move, asked it to re-open his 2012 immigration case. The board agreed, then ordered him deported.
“Mario Guevara’s deportation is a troubling sign of the deteriorating freedom of the press under the Trump administration,” said Katherine Jacobsen, the US program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Make no mistake, this is not a simple immigration case as authorities would have the public believe,” Jacobsen said. “Guevara was first detained in retaliation for his reporting and throughout his prolonged detention the government argued that he was being held because his livestreaming activity posed a danger to law enforcement activity.”
The press freedom organization called the deportation “shameful” and said it was “the first time that CPJ has documented this type of retaliation related to reporting activity.”
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