Bing detains respected immigrant journalist

“Los Angeles Boca del Lobo,” A 2019 era The short documentary Mario Guevara is a journalist in the suburbs of Atlanta who has attracted a lot of audiences among Latino immigrants in the region. In one scene, a woman tells Guevara that her husband has just been detained ice The agent walked into the “La Boca del Lobo” (“entering the wolf’s mouth”, which is the expression of “entering the lion’s nest”). In the fiscal year 2017, immigration law enforcement agencies conducted four non-criminal arrests in Atlanta and caused damage in Spanish-speaking communities. Guevara, a forty-seven-year-old El Salvador immigrant, is the only journalist in Atlanta (probably in the United States), and has been covering these raids every day for years. “Mr. Guevara’s work and his obsession are tracking the wolf,” video director Jesse Moss Write Among the accompanying works era.

Guevara himself is now in custody ice Agent. He was arrested on June 14 while holding a Kingless protest near Atlanta and is currently being held in an immigration assignment center. His case highlights the particularly vulnerable position of immigrant journalists regarding immigrant communities. As an attack on the free press mount, including Intimidation by journalists involved in protestjournalists are becoming the target of law enforcement and immigration agencies.

Guevara’s career as a journalist in El Salvador is brief, but very important. When he was in his twenties, he joined LaPrensa Gráficaone of the country’s major newspapers. “He was still young and very enthusiastic,” Francisco Campos, a famous photographer who was his editor at the time, told me. Guevara lives in Apopa, north of the capital San Salvador Maras– Originating in Los Angeles, its members were deported to Gons in El Salvador in the nineteenth century, and they usually threaten those who don’t pay them Lunta (Protect money). Guevara reveals to Campos that he is afraid of them.

In 2003, Campos sent him to conduct a large-scale protest in front of the National Government Complex of San Salvador. The organizer was the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a left-wing guerrilla organization during the Civil War that became a legitimate party after the 1992 peace agreement. More than a decade has passed since the end of the cruel twelve-year conflict, and street protests often end with violent measures. As a reporter LaPrensa GráficaGuevara was a goal: FMLN sympathizers saw the document as a political enemy because it supported the army through war. A group of protesters attacked Guevara, who sought asylum at the nearby Justice Department. He was then taken to the police station, where Campos picked him up later that day. Guevara later Tell CNN During this period, he was threatened with death; in the documentary, he reiterated that he had “created some enemies” and was guaranteed “two bullets on his chest.” In early 2004, Guevara left El Salvador for the United States with his wife and young daughter, and reportedly arrived on a tourist visa. He settled in Atlanta and eventually demanded asylum.

Guevara Latino atlanta. In 2007, he moved to Mundo HispánicoCox Enterprises had Atlanta stores at the time Journal Constitution. Mundo Hispánico Become Georgia’s leading Spanish-language news media, with digital rivals that of British language media: by 2020, it has 4.9 million followers on Facebook, and Journal Constitution Only 837,000. This growth coincides with the rapid growth of the state’s Latino population. The Atlanta metropolitan area grew by more than 30% between 2010 and 2020, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Federal plans allow ice Working with state and local law enforcement agencies, the number of detentions has been expanded across the region. Guevara begins to mask them when it happens to record their personal and public losses. Shortly before the first Trump administration began, Guevara began to notice abandoned vans on the side of the road, usually with ladders attached to the roof with coffee inside, and realized that ice Targeted trucks carrying immigrant construction workers. He started driving in the Atlanta area at dawn ice Operations are the most common to capture and live stream these raids.

Guevara has built a large number of immigrant audiences on social media. He now has over 1.4 million followers on all platforms, including nearly 90 million on Facebook. He has developed a direct relationship with them by answering their messages and talking to them, or introducing himself nearby and introducing himself. They often send him tips, and he pursues and turns into stories. “He has eyes and ears everywhere,” Lautaro Grinspan, a bilingual immigration journalist in Atlanta. Journal Constitution,tell me. When they “get official statistics on official immigration arrests in the area, the second best source is Mario”. Greenspan, who Introduced Guevara In May, within weeks before his arrest, he added that his impact on the Spanish-speaking community was “hard to exaggerate”. “He is a strange presence in our media ecosystem.” Now, “he finds himself in the gut of an immigration directional system, experiencing firsthand what he wrote in the past.”

In “La Boca del Lobo”, Guevara recalls the prompt: ice Around a building, knocking on the door. When Guevara arrived at the scene, officers had blocked the area. He started live and at some point he realized that they watched the immigrants after the action on his Facebook page. The man contacted Guevara and asked him to ice Agents so that they don’t shoot when they leave the building. Guevara informed the officer that the man inside was afraid to come out until he surrendered, and they communicated with him through Guevara. In the same video, Guevara noted that as a journalist he did not take support – he frequently interviewed ice Agents and police perspectives – But he noted that the raiders created “a lot of fear and fear. A lot of panic. Some people don’t go to work, nor do they go to work after an attack near the attack. This fear doesn’t keep them going to live a normal life.” He added: “I understand the fear. Sometimes I think I’ll be the next one.”

At that time, Guevara’s request for asylum had been denied. In June 2012, a judge ordered him to leave the country within 60 days, but his lawyers were granted an administrative closure that the process could temporarily suspend the dismissal process. Guevara and his wife have two sons born in the United States, and Guevara applied for a green card as a direct relative of a citizen. According to one of his attorneys, Giovanni Díaz, he received a temporary work permit. His green card request is still waiting. In a recent press conference, Guevara’s daughter mentioned that one of her brothers, now twenty-one, was sponsoring her father’s request, had to undergo two surgeries to eliminate brain tumors and depend financially and emotionally on his father.

Despite Guevara’s legal vulnerability, reports continue to be reported. He left Mundo Hispánico Last year, he launched his own action Mgnews. June 14, wearing a red shirt, helmet and black vest with the words “according to“He covered up the protests without the king’s protest in the big white letters on the front and back. A group of local police officers closed him off and even though he loudly identified himself as a “member of the media” they arrested him. He was “very very, very well known in the community, even if these jurisdictions and these policemen and these policemen.” . . It’s hard to believe they don’t know who he is. “His attorney Diaz said in a press conference.

Guevara was taken to the DeKalb County Jail and charged with three misdemeanors: obstructing law enforcement officers, illegal council and pedestrians improperly entering the road. A few days later, Gwinnett County filed three other misdemeanor charges – ignoring traffic signs, using communication equipment and driving recklessly, stemming from an incident in May, where Guevara is recording a legal enforcement action, according to Díaz. (Dekalb County canceled the charges on June 25, but the charges filed in Gwinnett County are still pending. Guevara’s attorney said in a press release: “It is not uncommon to seek traffic warrants after allegedly illegal activities. However, we are always working to get information about these matters until they work for these orders. On June 18, police turned Guevara to icehe was transferred to Foxton ice machining center in southeast Georgia. On Friday, June 20, ice Announced that the deportation procedure has been initiated.

El Salvador’s photojournalist Francisco Campos, who was editor of Guevara and kept in touch with him, saw news of his arrest on Guevara’s social media account. “Mario has helped several people here since he left,” he told me. He said that about a decade ago, Guevara, with the help of a Campesino in Sensuntepeque, a remote area near the border with Honduras. Gang members blackmailed his land, the man was forced to mortgage his land, and the bank was about to foreclose. Campos said Guevara raised the money and deposited it directly into the bank to cancel the person’s debts and ensure he maintains ownership of the property. Campos said sending Guevara back to El Salvador “would be a very unfortunate situation”. “The newsroom already has 60% of the staff. Many journalists are out of work. This is not the country where you can start a successful news channel like he did there. It would be personal devastating for him.”

The committee that protects journalists (where I serve as a member of the board) and a civil society and media organization expresses “alert” in Guevara’s detention letter arrive Kristi NoemSecretary of Homeland Security, demanded his release. “If the case in Groisa occurs, it would represent a serious erosion of press freedom and the rule of law. Journalists who are not U.S. citizens may only have the risk of being deported because local law enforcement has filed misdemeanor charges against them by any retaliation against them by any reports that they have not heard of these charges in court,” the letter reads. (The Press Freedom Tracker records the arrests of 11 journalists since Trump’s inaugurationice Protests and efforts are being made to verify the arrest of four people. ice Guardianship is because he entered the country illegally in 2004.

Maritza Félix, Founder and Director of Spanish News Media Contta, Arizonaheadquartered in Phoenix City, has known Guevara for many years. She told me that news of his arrest had exacerbated the “trauma” journalists for months, especially those who came to the United States to seek their lack of freedom in their country. “Today is Mario, but tomorrow may be any of us. We used to believe we are in a country with respect for the law and the constitution.” She said her team saw an increase in hate messages in emails and social media – “Back to your country”, “speak English” and forced to take security measures she never imagined.