Scheer Post News
ICE Continues to Detain Award-Winning Journalist Who Filmed Immigration Raids
By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg / Truthout–Re-posted on Scheer Post
Award-winning journalist Mario Guevara, who had begun documenting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, has been detained since his arrest at a protest on June 14 in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Guevara has spent almost all of his detention in ICE custody, although he is authorized to live and work in the United States. He immigrated to the United States more than 20 years ago from El Salvador to escape persecution for his journalism. Guevara settled in Georgia and continued to work as a journalist, first for Mundo Hispánico, and then, in 2024, he founded his own news organization, MG News, which had recently begun filming ICE abductions.
In a phone interview from an ICE jail in South Georgia, Guevero told The Altanta-Journal Constitution that the agency is retaliating against him because, “I was following them. I was showing their faces when they were arresting immigrants.” Some officers have said to him, “You gave me a hard time, Mario. Hey, remember me?”
On August 20, Guevara’s legal team, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Georgia, filed a habeas corpus petition requesting that the court allow Guevara to pay the $7,500 bond set by an immigration judge on July 1. Federal prosecutors had appealed the bond order to the Board of Immigration Appeals and were granted a stay, or pause, of the order, thereby preventing Guevara’s release.
At a hearing on Wednesday, the judge did not rule on Guevara’s petition and requested briefs from both sides.
Guevara’s saga began more than two months ago when he was reporting on a “No Kings” protest, which was part of a nationwide day of action to protest President Donald Trump. According to the petition, body camera footage from the protest shows an officer instructing other officers to, “Keep an eye on the guy in the red shirt. If he gets to the road, lock his a** up. . . . He’s been warned multiple times.” Another officer asked, “Press?” The first officer replied, “Yep.”
About a minute later, Guevara stepped off the sidewalk as he moved out of the way of police officers coming through the area, and was promptly arrested. Video of his arrest shows that Guevara is wearing a red shirt underneath a vest clearly marked with PRESS on the front and back.
After his arrest, ICE placed a detainer on Guevara. Although all criminal charges related to the protest have been dropped, federal prosecutors have fought to keep him locked up in ICE custody.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has denied that ICE arrested Guevara because he is a journalist. In an email to Truthout, DHS claimed that he “is in ICE custody because he entered the country illegally in 2004,” which is false.
The immigration judge who granted Guevara bond wrote that the journalist “has a history of following the laws of the United States, as he legally entered the U.S. with a B1 visa, he has employment authorization and a social security number so that he can legally work in the United States, and he has a history of paying his taxes.”
The habeas petition quotes extensively from the government’s filings to demonstrate that ICE is targeting Guevara because he is a journalist.
“In the Notice of Appeal, the Government states that Mr. Guevara is a danger to the community because Mr. Guevara had ‘on five separate occasions … recorded or live streamed’ law enforcement officers and ‘post[ed] videos of undercover agents, their vehicles, and tag numbers,’” it reads. “The Government further states that ‘[l]ocal law enforcement reviewed the respondent’s public posts and learned that the videos were viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.’”
Guevara is currently held in solitary confinement for 22 hours a day at the Folkston ICE Processing Center, according to the petition. For two hours a day, he’s confined to a larger cell where he can “see the sky and breathe fresh air.” During his detention, he has lost approximately 20 pounds.
“The freedom of press is only for U.S. citizens,” he told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on a call from Folkston. “If I’m outside again, I don’t think I will be on ICE anymore because everything is different now.”
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a reporter based in New Jersey.