Atlanta reporter detained by Ice ‘punished for his journalism’, rights groups say

Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran journalist imprisoned in a south Georgia immigration detention center after being arrested covering a “No Kings Day” protest in June, is being “punished for his journalism”, first amendment rights groups said.

“The charges were dropped, yet he remains detained by Ice,” said José Zamora, the regional director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, during a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Georgia capitol with Guevara’s attorneys and family. “Let’s be clear, Mario is being punished for his journalism. He is now the only journalist in prison in the US in direct retaliation for his reporting.”

A police officer from the city of Doraville in north DeKalb county arrested Guevara on 14 June on misdemeanor charges of pedestrian in the roadway, failure to disperse and obstruction while Guevara was covering a protest in an immigrant-heavy neighborhood. Guevara is widely followed by a Spanish-speaking audience for his coverage of immigration raids in Georgia, and more than 1 million people were watching his livestream on Facebook when he was arrested.

Guevara, a native of El Salvador, has been in the US for more than 20 years. While his petition for asylum was rejected in 2012, his deportation was administratively closed in an appeal, and he has both a work permit and a pending application for a green card, his attorney Giovanni Diaz said.

Though charges from the protest were quickly dropped, the sheriff of nearby Gwinnett county laid a second set of unrelated misdemeanor traffic charges shortly after Guevara’s arrest. The Gwinnett county solicitor subsequently dropped those charges as well, but not before Gwinnett’s sheriff’s office seized his cell phone with a search warrant.

Guevara’s cell phone has not been returned, and it is unclear where it is, what data has been transferred from it or whether that data has been shared with federal agencies, Diaz said.

“Everybody’s saying we don’t see a warrant in the system,” Diaz said, describing his office’s inquiries with the sheriff and other agencies. “So, one of two things happened. Some other agency that hasn’t contacted us took it – US attorney’s [office], Ice, somebody else has it – or the phone was just plain stolen.

“I think it’s par for the course, considering the government’s conduct in this case. We’re doing this, at least initially, to see if we get the phone back, but again, if they don’t give the phone back, its another reason to file a lawsuit in federal court.”

Guevara’s family was forced to make an extortion payment after another inmate threatened him while he was briefly held in general population in the federal prison in Atlanta. Guevara is now being held in isolation, which may help protect him, but also limits his ability to report on conditions at the Folkston immigration center, set to become the largest Ice detention center in the US.

“With every day that passes, we are losing time that we will never get back,” said his daughter Katherine Guevara. “I know so many others in the same situation understand it all too well. I’m deeply disappointed with this country. This is not just about one journalist. This is about what kind of country we want to be. If a government can punish a reporter for doing his job, what message does this send? What protections are left for the rest of us?”