A Hispanic immigration reporter who has lived in the United States for 20 years could face deportation after he was arrested by local police in Georgia while covering a protest.
Mario Guevara, originally from El Salvador, was detained by the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday for alleged obstruction of officers and unlawful assembly at a “No Kings” event outside Atlanta.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then placed a detainer on him, indicating that the agency wishes to take him into custody and potentially initiate removal proceedings.
Newsweek reached out to ICE via email and Guevara’s attorneys via contact form for comment Tuesday afternoon.
The Context
Guevara was covering the “No Kings” protest against President Donald Trump and was livestreaming the event to his large following on social media, with his arrest by local law enforcement also caught on camera.
What To Know
The livestream video showed Guevara standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, filming police in riot gear walking through a parking lot, before he stepped into the street as officers approached.
“I’m a member of the media, officer,” Guevara told a police officer right before he was arrested. The video showed Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with “PRESS” printed across his chest.
Guevara was jailed in DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta, on charges of obstructing police, unlawful assembly, and improperly entering a roadway. His attorney, Giovanni Diaz, told the Associated Press that a judge granted Guevara bond on Monday, but he was kept in jail after ICE placed an extra 48-hour hold on him.
“He’s not a legal permanent resident, but he has authorization to remain and work in the United States,” Diaz said, adding that Guevara has an adult son who is a U.S. citizen and has an application pending for his green card.
Diaz insisted that Guevara had a strong case for being allowed to stay in the U.S. But he said that Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement has added “another level of anxiety.”
Who Is Mario Guevara?
Guevara fled El Salvador with his family in 2004, saying he was beaten and repeatedly harassed because of his work as a political reporter for the newspaper La Prensa Grafica. They immigrated to Georgia, where Guevara worked as a reporter for the state’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, Mundo Hispanico, before launching his own online news site, MGNews.
Guevara’s coverage of immigration raids, often documented live with the help of a network of tipsters, has earned him a substantial social media following that exceeds 782,000 on Facebook alone.
Like hundreds of communities across the United States, DeKalb County saw crowds gather on Saturday to protest the Trump administration. County officials said in a news release that police were dispatched to confront protesters marching toward an interstate on-ramp. Officers fired tear gas and made at least eight arrests.
Guevara was photographed at that protest by news outlets including the AP. The video he recorded leading up to his arrest shows him standing beside a shopping center, at a distance from police vehicles blocking a roadway. Guevara doesn’t appear to be near any crowds or confrontations when police arrested him.
What People Are Saying
Katherine Jacobsen, the Committee to Protect Journalists’ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator, told Newsweek in a statement: “We are outraged at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s request to continue the detention of Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara after he was arrested on Saturday while covering Atlanta protests. This request, which could lead to Guevara’s deportation, is a crude form of censorship. He must be released without delay.”
Giovanni Diaz told the AP that Mario Guevara was known by local law enforcement: “He’s been doing this type of work for 20-plus years, and now he gets detained. It’s concerning. He’s a member of the press. And he doesn’t seem to be committing any crime.”
What Happens Next
If ICE agents take custody of Guevara, Diaz said, his case would move to federal immigration court for potential deportation proceedings.
This story includes reporting by The Associated Press.
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