Once again, administration deportation machinery has not been directed, but against a journalist. Mario Guevara, a 48 -year -old Salvadoran, has been expelled to El Salvador, after living in the United States for more than 20 years and without having criminal charges against him.
Upon arriving at El Salvador, Guevara made his first statements to the local press. “My land, my land, my land. Thank God. It wasn’t how I wanted to come to my land, but thank God,” he said with tears in my eyes. As if he continued covering news, this time with himself as the protagonist, he grabbed the microphone of the MG News chain, for which I worked from the United States: “I feel with my heart split because I leave the middle of my family (…) I have passed from four in the morning with wives, like a criminal. It is the treatment that the United States has given me after so many years, but I have no resentment,” he said.
Civil rights organizations denounce expulsion as an unprecedented case of attack on freedom of expression. Guevara was deported after being more than 100 days stopped by him. “This is a shameful erosion of press freedom in the United States,” said the committee for the protection of journalists and free press (CPJ). This is “the first time that the CPJ documes this type of retaliation related to journalism.”
BREAKING🚨 Journalist Mario Guevara has officially been deported Friday from the United States back to his native El Salvador. This is a shameful erosion of press freedom in the U.S. — the first time that CPJ has documented this type of retaliation related to reporting.…
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom)
“His deportation not only constitutes a violation of his human rights, but also transmits a terrifying and dangerous message: that journalists can be arrested, silenced and deported simply for doing their job. It is another clear example of the growing and overlapping attacks on the rights to freedom of expression and protest, and the rights of immigrants in the United States,” said Amnesty International in a statement.
A Federal Court denied on Wednesday the urgency request that the journalist submitted to prevent deportation. The Court of Appeals of the eleventh circuit ruled against him arguing that he had not submitted the necessary documentation to request the permanent residence. Guevara has two American children and could request permanent residence (green card).
“There are no words to describe the loss and devastation that my family feels. I am completely shocked and unbelievable that the government has punished my father simply for dedicating himself to journalism, his profession of life,” said his son, Oscar Guevara, knowing the deportation order.
Guevara was arrested against the Trump administration in Dekalb County, Georgia. Although the charges against him were dismissed, ICE put him under his custody and LW locked in the folkston detention center, Georgia. An immigration judge allowed him to leave on bail in July, but the government prevented him, claiming that his reports on police activities were dangerous.
Guevara arrived in the United States in 2004 with a visitor visa. He requested asylum, but was denied. According to his lawyers, he was granted the voluntary exit instead of a deportation order. The case passed to the Immigration Appeals Board and an agreement was reached to close it administratively. Guevara was in Limbo, but he had a work permit. In June, after his arrest, the deportation case was reopened.
The American Union for Civil Liberties (ACLU), which defends its case, presented an urgent habeas corpus request, arguing that Guevara’s arrest was an unconstitutional retaliation against protected journalistic activities under the first amendment, requesting that it be released. “He has lived in the United States for more than two decades, he is a journalist, he received an Emmy award, he is eligible to be a permanent legal resident (obtaining his green card) Through his son who is an American citizen and, first of all, he should never have been imprisoned, ”said the ACLU in a statement.
On September 24, the ACLU published a letter that Guevara wrote when he was 100 days detained. “Today, I fulfill 100 days after bars, more than three months locked up as a criminal. I am aware of my legal situation, I know that I am about to be expelled from this country, which I have loved and respected for more than two decades,” he says.
In the letter, Guevara denounces that the performance of his work is the reason they wanted to deport him. “If they deport me, I go with my forehead high, because I am convinced that it will be for exercising my journalistic work and not for committing crimes,” he writes. He also describes the humiliation he has suffered and the pain that he involves separating from his family, to close with a bitter summary of the moment in the country for Trump’s anti -immigration policy: “The oath to the United States flag says in one part: ‘with freedom and justice for all’. That is now a fallacy. They should add ‘with the exception of immigrants.”
