Press-Freedom Groups Call on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Immediately Release Journalist Mario Guevara from Prolonged ICE Detention

NEW YORK — On Thursday, a coalition of leading press-freedom groups sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling for the immediate release of journalist Mario Guevara. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Guevara while he was covering #NoKings protests on June 14. 

The letter — signed by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Free Press, the Atlanta Press Club, Common Cause Georgia, First Amendment Coalition, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Georgia First Amendment Foundation, Georgia Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Society of Professional Journalists — expresses the groups’ alarm that Guevara has remained in detention for two months despite the fact that he is not facing any charges and was legally in the United States at the time of his arrest.

Guevara’s arrest and detention “represents an erosion of democratic norms in the United States and a curtailment in journalists’ ability to do their jobs, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, without fear of prolonged detention,” reads the letter. 

Guevara is currently the only journalist in custody in the United States whose arrest is related to the work of newsgathering. He is an Emmy-winning reporter with a large following in Georgia. Originally from El Salvador, Guevara had been in the United States legally for 20 years and has become an integral part of the Atlanta metro community. He was charged with a number of misdemeanors following his June 14 arrest, but all of these have been dropped and an immigration-court judge ordered Guevara’s release on bond in early July. Shortly after this, the Bureau of Immigration Appeals granted ICE a stay, blocking bond for Guevara and preventing his release.

“Mario Guevara’s continued detention for livestreaming a protest and informing his community is a direct attack on press freedom and sets a dangerous precedent in the United States,” said Jose Carlos Zamora, CPJ regional director for the Americas. “No journalist should be arrested or held for doing their job.”

“Every day Mario Guevara remains in federal custody is another day the government sends a chilling message that our freedoms are no longer guaranteed but merely conditional in the United States,” said Nora Benavidez, Free Press’ senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights. “His children now been without their father for two months; each of those days is time they cannot get back with him. If people like Mario Guevara are cast as dangerous, that says more about the kind of nation we are becoming than it does about who Mr. Guevara is. Mr. Guevara’s case is just the tip of the spear pointed at everyone’s right to speak truth to power and question the abuses of an authoritarian-minded regime.”

Background: 
On July 22, many of these groups joined Guevara’s legal counsel and members of his immediate family at a press conference at the Georgia State Capitol to speak out on behalf of Guevara’s First-Amendment rights and demand his release from detention.