ICE officials, attorneys for Mario Guevara spar over the Georgia journalist’s immigration history

Lawyers for Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara and his family are asking a federal court to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him while he is in their custody. Guevara’s lawyers, who include those from the American Civil Liberties Union, asked the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Georgia on Monday for […]

Journalist Mario Guevara was live-streaming the June 14 anti-ICE protest on Chamblee Tucker Road when he was arrested. Photo credit: Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon with the Atlanta Civic Circle

Lawyers for Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara and his family are asking a federal court to stop U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him while he is in their custody.

Guevara’s lawyers, who include those from the American Civil Liberties Union, asked the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Georgia on Monday for his release and to halt any potential deportation after federal officials suddenly resurrected an older immigration case Friday. His lawyers also requested an emergency hearing and his release on Friday.

Guevara, a Salvadoran native who has lived in the United States since 2004, according to court documents, has been held in immigration detention since June 14, when he was arrested while livestreaming an anti-ICE protest in Atlanta. His misdemeanor charges were ultimately dropped but not before he was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

His arrest and continued detainment has alarmed free speech advocates and attracted national attention. 

The ACLU and Guevara’s family, including his children Katherine and Oscar Guevara, are calling for his immediate release, saying that his detention is illegal and a violation of his First Amendment rights.

“No one should have to face this fear of punishment for their free speech in this country. Still, we are holding on to hope that the government will do the right thing and release him at once. His place is with his family and his community, not behind bars or facing deportation,” Katherine Guevara said.

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But a point of contention in the case is Guevara’s immigration history. In a statement, ICE Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the “facts of this case have not changed. Mario Guevara is in the country illegally.” McLaughlin said Guevara was granted voluntary departure in 2012 but refused to leave and was subsequently given a “final order of removal from an immigration judge in 2012.”

Scarlet Kim, ACLU’s senior staff attorney, disagreed, calling ICE’s statement “incorrect.” According to Kim, while Guevara was granted voluntary departure in 2012, he appealed the decision. His case was then administratively closed, legally authorizing him to remain in the U.S. for the last 13 years.

“He never received a final order of removal,” Kim said in a statement.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

Kim said the Board of Immigration Appeals reopened the removal proceedings and reinstated the voluntary departure order Friday, giving Guevara 60 days to leave the country voluntarily. The ACLU argued in a court filing Monday that because he is in detention, ICE could undermine the voluntary departure order and deport him at any moment.

“This decision renders the Court’s intervention all the more urgent. Notwithstanding that Mr. Guevara was granted voluntary departure—which gives him 60 days to voluntarily leave the United States—the Government has offered no assurances that it will not put him on a plane back to El Salvador at any moment,” Guevara’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

First Amendment experts speaking at a press conference Tuesday said that the government’s actions against Guevara are part of a broader trend of suppressing free speech and intimidating journalists. Clare Norins, a law professor and director of the First Amendment Clinic at the University of Georgia, also representing Guevara, said that he is the only known journalist currently detained in the U.S. for his reporting. 

“Even though all the criminal charges against him were dropped, the government claimed that Mr. Guevara’s filming and reporting on police activity occurring in public made him a danger to the community. In other words, they continued to detain him for exercising his First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and of the press,” Norins said.

ICE has previously disputed claims that Guevara’s detainment was connected to his reporting.