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Award-winning Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara has been deported to El Salvador in what press freedom advocates alleged was done “in retaliation for his reporting.”
A leader with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a nonprofit organization that defends worldwide press freedom, said Guevara’s deportation from the U.S. Friday morning was the first time the organization “has documented this type of retaliation related to reporting activity.”
“Make no mistake, this is not a simple immigration case as authorities would have the public believe,” said Katherine Jacobsen, the CPJ’s U.S., Canada and Caribbean program coordinator.
Guevara arrived Friday in El Salvador, where he was released by Salvadoran immigration authorities.
“I feel sad, but I also feel happy to be in my homeland,” Guevara told journalists in El Salvador, according to CNN. “I mean, they didn’t execute me. Perhaps the racist government wanted to execute me.”
“And I’m here in my homeland,” he said. “So, at the end of the day, I think it’s a blessing.”
Local law enforcement arrested Guevara in June while he was livestreaming an anti-Trump “No Kings” demonstration near Atlanta, Ga.
Guevara had three misdemeanor charges filed against him for unlawful assembly, obstruction and being a pedestrian on a roadway. Though a judge ordered his release on bond, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers issued a detainer against him.
ICE moved him to the Folkston ICE Processing Center in southern Georgia and later moved him to two other detention centers.
ICE kept him in custody even after an immigration judge ordered his release on bond and after all misdemeanor charges against him were dropped. His family attempted to pay his $7,500 bond with ICE three times, according to The Associated Press, but all attempts were denied. Guevara also sued the Trump administration in August, arguing he was being held unconstitutionally.
Guevara, the founder of and a journalist for MG News, lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years. He reportedly entered the country legally in 2004 and applied for asylum in 2005, fearing endangerment in El Salvador due to his work as a journalist.
“Mario Guevara was here legally in the country, yet similarly he was targeted for removal because the government disliked him exercising his First Amendment rights,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel for the media advocacy group The Free Press, said in a statement. “It’s devastating to see this administration abandon the core press freedom principles the United States was founded on.”
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Hill that DHS is “happy to report Mario Guevara is back home in El Salvador.”
“If you come to our country and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will NEVER return,” McLaughlin added.
