Mario Guevara has said he may have been “the first” immigrant journalist whom Donald Trump’s administration deported from the US while working – but the Emmy award-winner added: “I don’t think [I’ll] be the only one.”
“Just be careful because [immigration agents are] very aggressive,” Guevara recently said from El Salvador in a virtual interview with the US Press Freedom Tracker, during which he was asked whether he had any message for other immigrant colleagues in the industry. “They showed they are – they don’t care about journalists. They don’t believe in the media.”
He continued: “They believe the media [are] against them. They see the media as an enemy … They have the power. They can do everything they want. It can be dangerous for us.”
Guevara delivered that chilling admonition amid what appeared to be the Salvadorian’s most extensive public remarks yet on his case, which culminated in his deportation from the US on 3 October as the federal immigration crackdown pursued by Trump throughout his second presidency barreled on.
On Sunday, three days after Guevara’s interview, the British journalist Sami Hamdi was detained by federal immigration authorities at San Francisco international airport.
A Trump administration official said Hamdi faced deportation after his detention and visa revocation – a plight which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) alleged was retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s having criticized Israel while touring the US.
“We are journalists – we try to be objective, but sometimes we have to report what is going on,” Guevara told the Tracker’s Briana Erickson, a reporter for the database and news site run by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “They can think we are against them even if it’s not true.
“You can have retaliation for that. That was my case. Probably I was the first one – but I don’t think [I’ll] be the only one.”
Guevara had been well-known in the Atlanta area for more than 20 years, after fleeing El Salvador to escape leftist militias in 2004. He possessed a work permit, and two of his children are US citizens, when he headed out to livestream anti-Trump “No Kings Day” protests in June.
As Guevara recounted to Erickson, on that day, he covered an afternoon demonstration outside Atlanta that authorities greeted more aggressively than they did an earlier protest which a US citizen colleague chronicled.
“It was a really bad decision for me,” Guevara said, explaining how an officer who overheard him speaking Spanish into a camera arrested him.
Guevara suggested to the Tracker that he surmised his reporting in Spanish at the moment got him targeted for arrest that day. “I saw them watching me,” said Guevara, whose journalism had earned multiple regional Emmy prizes and nominations. “Maybe it’s because I’m Latino.”
Local prosecutors quickly dismissed the charges on which Guevara was arrested. But he remained in custody with an immigration judge in 2012 having denied Guevara’s bid to remain in the US on grounds of asylum.
Guevara had appealed that 2012 decision to a body which reviews immigration rulings. But that appeal had not been decided when prosecutors agreed to administratively close Guevara’s case.
During complex legal proceedings that unfolded after his arrest, Guevara’s lawyers argued that he had secured authorization to live and work in the US. They also said the purpose of detaining Guevara was to silence his reporting, which violated his constitutional rights.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, countered that the only reason the weight of the government fell on Guevara was because he was in the US illegally. And the administration – whose leader frequently wages war against the press – managed to reopen Guevara’s old immigration case and eventually deport him to El Salvador.
Guevara told Erickson that on the night before his deportation he was given 20 minutes to call the family he was leaving in the US and say goodbye. He said his treatment reminded him of attacks that victimized him while covering protests as a journalist in El Salvador before seeking asylum in the US.
“It’s not the way I wanted to come back to my country – deported like a criminal,” Guevara said to Erickson. “I was frustrated, but until the last minute I still had the hope to stay in the United States because I believe in the justice of the country.”
According to his interview with Erickson, Guevara had not given up hope of one day returning to the US, where he said he had a fully paid house and was striving for legal permanent residency at the time of his deportation.
“I worked a lot during the last 20 years,” Guevara said. “I have my own home, my own cars, you know – everything; my American dream.
“But in a moment, they changed everything for me.”
