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A Reporter Fights for His Freedom (Part Two)
00:53:25
The story of how the U.S. government targeted a reporter who had his eyes on ICE.
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- [00:06]
Host (Ryhread)
Hey, everybody. This is part two of our story about reporter Mario Guevara. If you haven't listened to part one yet, go do that now. It should just be the previous episode in your podcast feed. Then come back here. Things will make a lot more sense if you do. Trust me. When we last left off, Mario was just being transferred into ICE detention after having been arrested while covering an anti ice protest outside Atlanta, when seemingly out of nowhere, the sheriff's office in his county, Gwinnett county, which was not where he was even arrested or being held, had slapped him with a bunch of traffic violations, which was highly suspicious because the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office was claiming Mario had run a red light and driven recklessly a month earlier, even though they hadn't pulled him over at the time, he'd gotten no ticket.
- [00:53]
Mario Guevara
What they told me the sheriff aquinate present the charges against you. I said, why? That shocked me. Why? Why were they doing this?
- [01:07]
Host (Ryhread)
At the same time, an immigration judge had granted Mario release on bond, writing that Mario was acting as a journalist and should be protected by the constitution. But I still didn't let him go. They saw to stay on that judge's order. If you're wondering where the hell the first Amendment is in all of this, the whole no abridging freedom of the press and all that jazz, well, so are we. Our producer, Sophie Kazis picks things up from here.
- [01:32]
Sophie Kazis
Before we go any further, I'm going to jump to the end of the story because it'll help me illustrate how nefarious the government was in Mario's case. The end of the story, Mario gets deported.
- [01:48]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
I remember very well on Wednesday afternoon,
- [01:52]
Sophie Kazis
it was October 1st of last year. Mario was in detention when he found
- [01:56]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
out I was taking my dinner and the other email said, mario, you are on tv. Mario, you're on tv.
- [02:03]
Host (Ryhread)
Now to some breaking news. We have just learned that a court
- [02:06]
Sophie Kazis
of appeals has denied Atlanta based journalist Mario Guevara's request to stay in the US he now could be deported to El Salvador as soon as today.
- [02:15]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
I immediately came to the phone. I talked with my phone with my family. My wife was crying and I explained her. I already know what happened. Don't worry. I already know what happened. Don't worry.
- [02:33]
Sophie Kazis
On its face, the reason Mario was deported was a bureaucratic technicality. Mario had a green card petition pending at the time. When he was arrested at the no Kings protest, everything was on track. His lawyers say he was a model candidate. The next step in the process would be for the government to approve that petition and then for Mario to fill out a form called an i485. The i485 is a requirement that was also impossible for Mario to fill out because U.S. citizenship and Immigration Services hadn't approved Mario's petition yet. Mario couldn't do anything about that. Yet three judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Mario's request to continue his bid to stay in the U.S. because, quote, critically, Guevara did not file an i485. Mario, in shackles, gets flown back to el Salvador on October 3rd, leaving his
- [03:36]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
wife and kids behind, say, 20 hours handcuffed. I was hungry. Obviously, it's nothing easy. It's nothing easy because especially if you are not criminal.
- [03:49]
Sophie Kazis
But here's something else critical. One of those three panel judges, the only one not appointed by Trump, by the way, adds a little written codawhat's known as a concurring opinion to the decision that results in Mario getting deported. That judge makes clear that Mario was protected as a journalist, just like the immigration judge who granted Mario's bondhad back early in his case. The appeals judge says this is true for Mario even as a non citizen of the United States. He writes, quote, the First Amendment protects the people, a term the Supreme Court has repeatedly interpreted to include all persons within the United States, regardless of immigration status. But he goes on, in the matter of Mario's immigration case, that's besides the point. Whether local officers violated Guevara's First Amendment rights by arresting him at the protest is not before us today. Nor is whether he was targeted for removal based on his constitutionally protected activities. And so the court never answers those questions. No court did. So that's what I wanted to find out. Did the US Government violate Mario's First Amendment rights? And after looking at this case for months, I think it's clear that, yes, they did. I believe the government targeted him, detained him, and fast tracked his deportation based on his reporting.
- [05:26]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
El sistema de justicia me parece que fue yusto comigo.
- [05:30]
Mario Guevara
The justice system was unfair to me because having to spend almost four months incarcerated like a criminal, not even people that actually commit serious crimes do that. I mean, they post bail and they are released the next day. They kept me locked up for a long time and they deported me based on pure lies. And that is unfair, that they use lies to deport someone and to keep someone in jail. That's unfair.
- [06:10]
Sophie Kazis
From placement theory and kcrw, I'm Sophie Kazis. How did the government do this to Mario, how did the First Amendment fail him? It's an essential thing to understand as the government continues to crack down on people who report and say things it doesn't like, with a particular emphasis right now on people who are trying to scrutinize ice. Stick around. So that was the end of Mario's story. Let's go back to where we left off. Mario was sitting in detention, hours away from his family after ICE filed an emergency stay to keep him locked up. He's wondering why the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office came up with those dubiously timed traffic violations against him. And then he gets a clue as to why. His lawyers tell him about some emails they'd gotten a hold of between the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office and ice.
- [07:13]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Cuando misogado me madero accesso a los correos electronico centre AIs.
- [07:17]
Mario Guevara
When my lawyers gave me access to the emails between the Gwinnett sheriff and ice, I realized that the sheriff was playing their game.
- [07:27]
Sophie Kazis
Remember, within days of his arrest, an immigration judge had ruled that Mario wasn't a danger and should be released. So ICE needed to provide a reason why Mario shouldn't be let out, why he would be a danger. And these emails show that ICE had gone looking for a reason. Mario's attorney, Scarlett Kim from the ACLU says in one sense, this wasn't unusual.
- [07:54]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
In general, ICE will look to someone's criminal record and history and often use that as a basis for opposing release from immigration detention.
- [08:06]
Sophie Kazis
Scarlett says that's pretty standard, even looking for minor charges like traffic violations. But in this email, they got a hold of Mario's team, saw that an ICE assistant director had emailed the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office asking for any warrants and also asking for, quote, any other investigative product we can use to fight Mario's bond request. In other words, dirt. And the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department obliged. They sent back a four page report with information ICE can use to argue that Mario shouldn't be let free. It flags the traffic violations. But what's extraordinary about this Gwinnett report, it's mostly about Mario's reporting. In it, the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office summarizes six of Mario's news stories video he's made about law enforcement in public between February and May of last year, describing how Mario showed up to law enforcement operations, filmed, sometimes livestreamed, asked the officers questions, spoke to observers, and sometimes Mario asked if some of the officers were ice. In other words, journalism. The report says Mario demonstrates a pattern of behavior involving surveillance of law enforcement and that his conduct, quote, contradicts societal norms.
- [09:38]
Mario Guevara
What I saw in the emails that I exchanged with the sheriff, the idea was to not let me out because I was a problem for both agencies. I was a headache for both. So the idea was to not let me out. So they started working together with criminal charges, and the other one to say to the judge, look, he's persecuting our officers, and he's filming them while they're doing, you know, operations. ICE said, give me more, give me more. We don't want this guy to get out.
- [10:13]
Sophie Kazis
When Mario read Gwinnett's report, he knew it was true that in the months before he was arrested, the first months of Trump's second term, tension had been escalating between him and the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office and ICE in ways it never had in his 20 plus years reporting on them. Previously, Mario had liked Donald Trump and his immigration policies before his second term, his promise to arrest and deport the worst of the worst dangerous criminals. But as soon as Trump took office again, Mario saw on the streets around Atlanta that ICE was arresting people who weren't violent criminals or criminals at all, Latinos who were just on their way to work. So he started reporting frankly on this, and he noticed ICE got much more hostile to him and other reporters.
- [11:07]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Los cambios que tubo ICE con la prensa.
- [11:10]
Mario Guevara
I mean, the changes in ICE with the press, with the Latino community were horrible. When Donald Trump took office, they would no longer communicate with us, no more emails about arrests, nothing. They started to do everything through social media, and they were bragging about this criminals that they were arresting. But they would deny us access to the jail to talk with the detainees. Why? Because they didn't want us to hear their version. They wanted only to reveal their own versions. They would deny me access to internal information that I used to get everything changed. And it's weird because United States is supposed to be a country that has lot of respect for the press, but the policies changed a lot when he took office. It was horrible. I could feel the tension during the ICE raids. ICE would cover their faces. We didn't used to see that they were a little bit more aggressive. The officers would get angry when they saw me. When I was going to a neighborhood where my followers would inform me that ICE was operating, I would already see suspicious vehicles watching me. They knew that I was going to cover that operation. Once they saw me, if they were already arresting people, they would put on their masks, and they would send one officer to intercept me so that I couldn't get closer. That happened several times, actually. I was addressed by name. They said, mario, Mario, stay back. So they knew it was me. And I started being afraid that I could be arrested. I told my wife, I think at some point I will be arrested for covering these rates.
- [13:16]
Sophie Kazis
And as he was covering this escalation by ice, he also started to see evidence that the Gwinnett county sheriff's office, the jurisdiction where he lives, was working with ice. More Remember, Gwinnett county has one of the largest Latino populations in the Atlanta area. And sheriff Kibo Taylor was elected on a promise to stop formally working with ice.
- [13:39]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
One of the first things that I would do is, you know, take the sheriff's department out of that particular agreement with ice.
- [13:48]
Sophie Kazis
And he had. So if the sheriff's office was collaborating with icemore, Mario wanted to document it and tell the public he would livestream Gwinnett officers in the field trying to uncover any ICE related activity they were doing. Sometimes Gwinnett officers told Mario the operations he was filming were investigations into human trafficking, drugs, gangs and cartels. But Mario says he was seeing evidence on the ground that there was something else going on.
- [14:19]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Cuando la real immigrantes para lle varcelos
- [14:22]
Mario Guevara
AIs actually, they were looking for immigrants to feed to ICE.
- [14:28]
Sophie Kazis
In 2024, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had signed a state law, HB 1105, that requires police to collaborate with ICE. If they don't, departments can lose funding, and individual officers who don't work with ICE can get charged with misdemeanors. Mario thinks HB 1105 was why Gwinnett was touchy about his reporting. They were being forced by the state to do more work with ICE when they'd promised their constituents they wouldn't. A rock and a hard place sitting in detention. Having read the report Gwenette sent to ice, Mario knew things weren't as cozy with the sheriff as they had been.
- [15:13]
Mario Guevara
That was part of the conflict that I had with the sheriff that was mad at me because I was exposing the agent's operations. I didn't know who was who and who was doing what. My duty was to report what the community asked of me.
- [15:32]
Sophie Kazis
That conflict, to Mario's thinking, was some standard reporting friction between Mario and the officers at Gwinnett he'd been covering. But now that friction had become an official document highlighting videos Mario had made that Gwinnett clearly didn't like. For example, in April, Mario showed up to where some undercover officers Were doing an investigation. He's wondering if they're ice. Some are in plain clothes and unmarked police cars. Mario live streams from the scene. Mario's sitting in his MG news pickup truck parked near an apartment complex, filming a group of officers, some with masks pulled up over their faces. One is clearly in a blue sheriff's uniform, no mask. Mario zooms in on one of their vehicles, a Gwinnett county sheriff's office suv, and then on an unmarked truck that some of the officers eventually get into before driving. He says, I haven't seen any immigration agents. The ones I think I saw are from the sheriff's office, the Gwinnett sheriff, But with those uniforms, those outfits, their faces covered, it's all very confusing. Shortly afterwards, Mario says he got a call from a lieutenant at Gwinnett.
- [17:07]
Mario Guevara
He said, I'm Lucianatia from the Gwinnett sheriff's department that I need you to delete a video that you have just uploaded where the faces of my officers can be seen. I said, the faces are covered. Yes, but you're showing the cars. I said, I'm sorry. If you tell me that showing the face of a police officer is going to danger their lives, I will remove it. But if you say I'm showing their cars, I don't care. And I did not delete the videos, and that upset them because they wanted those videos gone.
- [17:49]
Sophie Kazis
I texted the number Mario gave me for lieutenant Diaz and got no response. And the Gwinnett county sheriff's office didn't answer my questions about this. Another time, Mario was livestreaming what he thought might be ice. The Gwinnett officers on scene tell him, no, it's not ice. It's our officers, and this is a narcotics investigation. A couple days later, Mario says he went to the sheriff's office to do an interview. He was with a new employee of
- [18:16]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
his named Alondra Los portavos del chairi de Buenet medijero.
- [18:20]
Mario Guevara
The spokespeople for the sheriff actually said, okay, we want you to do something before the interview. We want you to delete a video you recorded last night of our agency during a raid. And I asked, what's wrong with video? And they said, we don't want you to show the faces of our agents because they don't want to be exposed. If you do not delete that video, we will not give you the interview. I said, alondra, okay, it's time to go. We're not going to do this interview because I will not accept any manipulations like this. And Alondra, who was new in journalism, asked me, mario, why this decision? And I said, because they want to force me to do something for them before the interview. And then the spokesperson for the widget sheriff said, look, I ask you because our agents are afraid, because many of them work undercover in drug cases and they can be hurt. I said, okay, that's different. If it's a favor like that, I can delete that as a courtesy to the agents. But you tried to condition me in the interview. I mean, I don't work that way. I have 25 years of experience. I'm not a newbie. So I will not be manipulated in this way. In the end, I decided to delete that video. I deleted it even in front of them.
- [19:46]
Sophie Kazis
All of this, the accounts of Mario showing up to the scene, asking their officers who was ICE and who wasn't uploading videos, the department asking Mario to take down videos and him sometimes refusing, was laid out in that report Gwinnett sent to ice. All of that, plus reckless driving. The four page report to Mario was a personal attack.
- [20:11]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
El Cherry de Gwynet, ISS was staff.
- [20:13]
Mario Guevara
The Gwinnett sheriff and his staff actually did a favor to ICE and a heartbeat.
- [20:21]
Sophie Kazis
Why do you think that Gwinnett did that after you were arrested?
- [20:29]
Mario Guevara
I think it was reprisal because I would say he's the sheriff with ice. They are working with ICE to deport our people. When they started doing things with the federal government against our community, well, I exposed that. That made me their enemy.
- [20:55]
Sophie Kazis
This four page report that the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office wrote in ICE's hands, this document becomes the single most hefty piece of evidence against Mario. Evidence that is used five times over the course of many months by ICE to combat and delay Mario's case. Evidence that Mario is a dangerous criminal who is unfit for release.
- [21:22]
Mario Guevara
It worked. What they did against me prevented me from going out of jail again.
- [21:30]
Sophie Kazis
Mario's lawyer, Scarlett Kim, from the aclu, on the four page report, it's just
- [21:35]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
a list of dates where he was showing up to where officers were clearly conducting their duties in public and documenting what they were doing.
- [21:45]
Sophie Kazis
Here she is reading from the government's legal arguments, where they regurgitate all the examples of Mario's journalism from the Gwinnett Report to argue that he's dangerous and shouldn't be released from detention.
- [21:58]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
On five separate occasions from February to May 2025, the respondent confronted local Georgia law enforcement officials and federal agents during undercover narcotics, gang and human trafficking investigations. Each time, the Respondent filmed undercover officers, their vehicles, and the suspects of the investigation and posted videos of the interactions to his Facebook account.
- [22:20]
Sophie Kazis
I'm going to have you keep going.
- [22:22]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
Specifically following a February 19, 2025 encounter, the respondent compromised the integrity of an undercover narcotics investigation by posting a video on his Facebook account showing the identity of an officer. On March 3, 2025, the respondent recorded an undercover vehicle with an officer behind the wheel, which resulted in the officer having to move to a less ideal position to continue his investigation. To avoid further disturbances, the respondent again posted a video of the encounter on his Facebook page. On April 2, 2025, the respondent arrived at another undercover investigation and filmed uniformed plain clothed and undercover officers. Again, the respondent posted this video to his Facebook page and identified the vehicles in the video as belonging to law enforcement.
- [23:09]
Sophie Kazis
What did you think when you read this part?
- [23:11]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
I mean, it's just completely absurd. He didn't confront any law enforcement officers or agents. He showed up to a scene where law enforcement officers were conducting their duties in public view, and. And he filmed what they were doing, which is an activity that is wholly protected by the First Amendment. This kind of reference to undercover officers suggesting that the fact that they were undercover is what made what he was doing so dangerous. I mean, there's so many issues with that statement. He was responding by arriving at these scenes to folks in the community saying that it was clear that there were law enforcement officers operating. Again, if it's clear to anyone walking down the street that they're operating, they're not doing a very good job being undercover. And then just in terms of the legal principle, the First Amendment right to record what law enforcement officers are doing in public view, there's no exception for undercover officers. And there's a really good reason for that, because it's not clear when you're filming officers conducting their duties in public, whether or not they're undercover or not undercover. I think a lot of journalists and other folks trying to film what government officers are doing in public will then be thinking to themselves, are they operating undercover? Are they not? How am I supposed to distinguish?
- [24:36]
Sophie Kazis
I've asked ICE and the Department of Homeland Security how arguing that a reporter should be jailed because of his reporting is possibly constitutional. They didn't answer me. They haven't responded to any of my questions. Neither has the White House. But DHS has weighed in on X. Back in the summer, the agency posted, quote, accusations that Mario Guevara was arrested by ICE because he is a journalist are completely untrue. This El Salvador national is in ICE custody because he entered the country illegally in 2004. Mario didn't enter the country illegally, though court records show he came on a valid visa. So that's a lie. And while he may not have been technically arrested by ICE because he's a journalist, they certainly used his journalism to keep him detained. And Mario told me as he was being transferred between facilities, which happened a bunch in the early days of his detention, ICE agents would sometimes talk to him. He says they knew who he was, knew that he'd been reporting on them.
- [25:48]
Mario Guevara
They actually told me, why are you following us? Why couldn't you just stay in your lane? You had a work permit. You shouldn't have messed with us. So I knew it was personal.
- [26:00]
Sophie Kazis
Coming up.
- [26:01]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
It's not there anymore. It's not there anymore.
- [26:03]
Sophie Kazis
What do you mean, it's not there anymore? A critical piece of evidence. In Mario's case, multiple pieces of evidence actually vanish. This is Kim Masters, host of the Business on kcrw. Every week, we take a deep dive into the deals and the drama that shape Hollywood. From the power plays in the boardroom to the creative battles on set, we bring you the inside stories behind the entertainment headlines. Check out the business part of the NPR podcast network. Once the government argued that they were incarcerating Mario because of his reporting, that's when the ACLU took him on as a client. Mario had been behind bars for about two months when senior ACLU attorney Scarlet Kim says they brought his case to
- [26:58]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
federal court with what's called a habeas petition. And the habeas petition sought Mario's immediate release from immigration detention on the basis that his continued detention by the government was a blatant violation of the First Amendment. And I should note that the administration has made its animus plain. In July, for example, Secretary Noem gave a statement at a press conference where she said videotaping ICE agents is equivalent to violence.
- [27:25]
Sophie Kazis
Violence is anything that threatens them and their safety. So it is doxxing them.
- [27:29]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
It's videotaping them where they're at, when
- [27:32]
Sophie Kazis
they're out on operations, encouraging other people to come. In the last year, Scarlett says, we've seen this position from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem playing out on the streets.
- [27:43]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
Immigration agents acting like a secret police, them masking up, refusing to wear visible id, driving unmarked cars. I think their retaliation against Mario is of a piece with this conduct, which is basically, they want to be able to conduct their immigration enforcement activities, their raids and their arrests in secret. They want to hide themselves in what they're doing from the public. And his work, Mario's work in particular was directed at reporting on those activities and officers. And he played a really unique role, as I said, because he was documenting it in real time and for an audience of hundreds of thousands of viewers who were particularly impacted by these activities
- [28:28]
Sophie Kazis
as they tried to get Mario freedom. Scarlett and her colleagues at the ACLU wanted to review the evidence ICE was citing to keep him detained. Specifically the videos highlighted by the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office in their four page report where they're claiming Mario was breaking traffic laws and proving a danger to public safety. So they go to check them out for themselves. Well, they try to.
- [28:53]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
We were really keen to see the video footage because we were hoping that we could actually review it and potentially use it to demonstrate what the underlying facts were. And we spoke to another employee at MG News who is responsible for maintaining the videos and also Oscar, Mario's son. They dug through and they said it just looks like a swath of videos has disappeared.
- [29:24]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
I don't know what. All the videos I record is not there anymore. It's not there anymore.
- [29:29]
Sophie Kazis
What do you mean it's not there anymore?
- [29:31]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
It's not on my social. It's not in my social media.
- [29:34]
Sophie Kazis
But you didn't delete it?
- [29:36]
Host (Ryhread)
No.
- [29:36]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Nobody on my team. Only four people on my team, me and four. Three more have access to this. Nobody.
- [29:41]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
Delete.
- [29:42]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
It's only the videos. The only video for regular coverage is there. Only the video. Specific video.
- [29:48]
Sophie Kazis
Was the leader the same video that the police had asked you to delete and you didn't disappeared off of your social media?
- [29:58]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Yes, it's not there. Even the video of my arrest, of my own arrest during the coverage during the protest is not there anymore.
- [30:07]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
I honestly don't know what to make of that. I mean, it's bizarre. Highly suspect. We know that the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office was reviewing these videos at the time that it issued the traffic warrant, so had access to them at some point in June, and then at some point later, like I think in July, they've all disappeared. I mean, it's really troubling.
- [30:31]
Sophie Kazis
I emailed the sheriff's office about this and they denied moving or having any involvement in the removal of the videos. ICE didn't respond when I asked if they'd done it. Some videos Mario says he's been able to re upload, but there are still some that appear to have vanished from the Internet altogether. These are the supposed evidence that ICE was relying on to claim Mario needed to be locked up for months and months. As time went on, Mario's case was getting more and more attention. News outlets ran stories with headlines like spanish language Journalist remains in ICE custody despite being granted bond and Atlanta Reporter detained by ICE punished for his Journalism rights. Groups say the committee to protect journalists had been raising an alarm since June when they wrote a letter to dhs secretary Kristi noem, calling on her to release Mario, saying, quote, if Guevara's case proceeds, it would represent a grim erosion of both freedom of the press and the rule of law. In July, CPJ also held a press conference on the steps of the Georgia capitol with civil rights lawyers, advocates and a state senator. Two of Mario's kids spoke. This isn't just about a journalist, his daughter said. It's about what kind of country we want to be. Every weekend, Mario's family would trek six hours from Gwinnett county to visit him at the ICE detention center in folkestone. Mario kept telling them, don't worry about me. I'm fine. But he wasn't. ICE put him in solitary confinement, made him go, saying it was for his own protection because of his high profile as a journalist. But Mario thought it was just them being cruel. He was in solitary for 69 days.
- [32:27]
Mario Guevara
I said, I don't need protection. I want to be out. I can't handle 22 hours in that little room. I can't. They didn't care. In the very beginning. I would wake up, and I was having palpitations. So they were like panic attacks. I was scared, and I was like, okay, where am I? Where am I? I started walking in that little cell, and I would count to 10 and breathe deep and try to get a hold of myself.
- [32:59]
Sophie Kazis
Mario's family was worried. Mario's son Oscar especially. He's 21, the middle child. For the past few years, he's had seizures. They're the result of a difficult surgery. He depends on his dad for his health stuff. My dad is my superhero. And so seeing him in that vulnerable state, it was scary. It was scary. They said that they had him in solitary confinement for his own safety, quote, unquote. But they knew what they were doing. They were punishing him for reporting on ICE operations. Despite all that, Mario continued to believe he'd be released.
- [33:49]
Mario Guevara
Honestly, I fought until the very last moment because I trusted American justice. I was convinced. I was sure that I was going to be freed that soon, a judge or someone was going to realize that what was done to me was unfair. And I was going to be freed.
- [34:14]
Sophie Kazis
Mario's lawyers had presented over 50 letters of support from family, friends and professionals, people who knew his family and watched his kids grow up. Members of his church who'd known him for 15 years, vouching for his moral character and community standing. Explaining that Mario's helped out as a Sunday school teacher, a pastor making a pastoral appeal, the president of the Atlanta chapter of the national association of Hispanic Journalists wrote, quote, even in the most humiliating and uncertain moments of his detention, Mario has carried himself with quiet dignity. And a former Georgia state rep, too, who wrote, mario's journalism played a critical role in elevating community voices and exposing issues that might otherwise have remained hidden from public view. Even an employee of a metro Atlanta police department who called Mario a valuable asset in engaging with the Hispanic community and helping to build stronger relationships between law enforcement and Hispanic residents. Support also came for Mario personally while detained from some of his police friends who were clearly disturbed, if not feeling implicated by how the government was treating him.
- [35:33]
Mario Guevara
Several of those people actually sent me letters and messages saying, mario, it's unfair what they're doing to you. We love you very much. We cannot understand why this is happening, but you are a good person.
- [35:44]
Sophie Kazis
Mario showed me one letter which he says came from an officer friend. It quotes the Bible, Psalms 23, and he writes, my heart is heavy for your incarceration. The highest ideal of journalism is the pursuit of truth. There is a reason why God guides you through these tracks of righteousness to find truth. ICE was able to keep Mario detained for more than 100 days, the majority of those in solitary in large part because they had been helped by the Gwinnett county sheriff's office. Immigration attorneys tell us it's easier and faster for the government to mount a deportation case against you if you're not free. Yes, there was a relatively new Georgia state law that forced a certain level of cooperation between local departments like the Gwinnett County Sheriff's office and ICE HB 1105. But did it really force Gwinnett to go so out of its way to provide all these claims about Mario's driving and his reporting? As Mario was sitting in solitary on the outside, residents, reporters and politicians in Gwinnett county were pressuring the sheriff, Kibo Taylor, to explain himself. He'd previously promised to work less with ICE. Now there was this new state law, House Bill 1105, saying they had to cooperate more. How was his department navigating this? He called a press conference to try and explain, but he wasn't very successful.
- [37:19]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
There Are a lot of problems. Okay. With House Bill 1105. A ton of problems with it. Okay. I don't agree with everything that is in 1105.
- [37:32]
Sophie Kazis
All right? A reporter asks him, so that means that you are not working with ice.
- [37:39]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
That's not. That is never what I said. We are working with ICE in compliance with the law.
- [37:46]
Sophie Kazis
Okay.
- [37:47]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
Okay.
- [37:47]
Curtis Clemens (Former Deputy)
Yeah.
- [37:48]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
So let's be clear on that.
- [37:49]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
Yeah.
- [37:50]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
We are working for them.
- [37:51]
Mario Guevara
Yes.
- [37:53]
Sophie Kazis
Then another reporter asks about Mario, specifically about the suspiciously timed traffic violations.
- [38:00]
Host (Ryhread)
Why the sheriff's office wait until four
- [38:03]
Mario Guevara
weeks to file those charges, that they were dropped?
- [38:07]
Sheriff Kibo Taylor
Because that was at the best time for us to get the charges done. There was no hidden agenda to say, hey, let us go out here and go do anything else. In Mario's case, there. There was no hidden agenda to say, hey, this is what we're doing here. Let's wait four weeks. Let's wait, let's do this. Any of that. When we felt like it was the appropriate time to take the charges, that's what we did. There's no agenda there. Okay.
- [38:31]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
It's not.
- [38:33]
Sophie Kazis
Sheriff Taylor insisted it was just happenstance that they charged these old traffic violations. At the moment when ICE was taking custody of Mario and looking for reasons to keep him incarcerated, I contacted seven officers who worked at or used to work at the sheriff's department, including the sheriff himself, wanting to know what they were saying to each other about what their department had helped do to Mario. Only one person agreed to talk to me and tell me his opinion on what happened. A former deputy from Gwinnett, Curtis Clemens.
- [39:07]
Curtis Clemens (Former Deputy)
Essentially, as far as I'm concerned, the current sheriff turned his back on him and the promises that he made to the community that we would not be cooperating with ice and it's very sad.
- [39:19]
Sophie Kazis
Clemens worked at the Gwinnett county sheriff's office for several years, then became assistant chief at another local department, then ran for sheriff twice against the current sheriff, Kibo Taylor.
- [39:29]
Curtis Clemens (Former Deputy)
Obviously, there was no merit to this case, and I think it appears that it was just the current sheriff and the sheriff's department just looking to help ice. I think immigration had already made up their mind he was being deported out of here one way or another. And I think anybody who would stand back and take an objective view of the situation, I think they would probably reach the same conclusion that the sheriff was collaborating and working with ICE in order to single out Mr. Guevara. I don't know if it benefited the sheriff some way, if it was a, you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back at a later date or some kind of, you know, agreement was made. We may never know, but I find that very, very disturbing.
- [40:21]
Sophie Kazis
In ICE detention, notably, Mario never heard from any of his friends at the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office.
- [40:30]
Mario Guevara
I never heard anything from them, and I understand it because they're afraid of losing their jobs.
- [40:36]
Sophie Kazis
And did you hear from the sheriff at all?
- [40:40]
Mario Guevara
No, not from the Gwinnett sheriff. I do blame the sheriff. That was a horrible betrayal. They betrayed me. You cannot tell someone that you value their work and their effort and, you know, whenever it suits them, they label you a danger or a risk and you need to be punished. I would have want to give them their awards back and said, you're liars and I don't want anything from you. But I never had that chance.
- [41:20]
Sophie Kazis
After 111 days behind bars, Mario was deported on October 3rd of last year. Before he was arrested while covering the no Kings protest, Mario was on track to get a green card. But once he was fed into the legal system, even if he never should have been arrested in the first place as a reporter under the Trump administration's mass deportation policy, they saw that his status was technically in limbo and work permit and pending green card applications be damned. They kicked him out because they could. About two weeks after he was sent back, Mario did a live interview from El Salvador on Fox News, the brand most known for having a direct line to the president. It was hard to watch Mario, someone who'd been described to me as a gutsy pull no punches rule following experienced reporter so defeated. A journalist pleading for his right to live in the United States at the expense of his right to report here freely. Mario, I want to ask you one more question. This is for one of my colleagues.
- [42:34]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
She wanted to know if there was
- [42:35]
Sophie Kazis
anything you would change about your reporting,
- [42:37]
Scarlett Kim (ACLU Attorney)
how you report now, knowing that you'd
- [42:40]
Sophie Kazis
face such serious consequences.
- [42:43]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
I will change everything. I will try to do different stories. Not following ICE anymore because, you know, this caused me a lot of. A lot of pain. Caused me a lot of pain for my family, too. Unfortunately, even I fight for four months, almost four months. I lost. Everything will change if I come back. Everything will change. I make a lot of report and literally I put their eyes on me and they did, you know, they win.
- [43:18]
Sophie Kazis
A lot has happened since we last spoke, so I wanted to check back on this and just ask you, what do you think about Trump and his immigration policies now? I called Mario recently after ICE's surge into Minnesota, where agents killed multiple people One of whom, Alex Preddy, was filming them when he was then shot. This has led to widespread protests, and since then, more journalists have been arrested for covering those protests. I wanted to know what Mario thought of all this as he watched from El Salvador.
- [43:57]
Mario Guevara
My opinion has changed radically. At one point, I thought Trump was a good alternative for the country, for the economy, for many other things, even security. I mean, I support Trump when he kicks criminals out of the country, but that's not what he's doing. He's going after innocent people. And I would never support him again because he has showed his true colors.
- [44:29]
Sophie Kazis
Yeah. From where you stand right now in 2026, do you still think that ICE has a no mission al contrario?
- [44:41]
Mario Guevara
It's quite the opposite. That ended up being a lie. Trump's promise, ISIS promise of clearing the country of criminals and deporting the bad homeless, that was a lie. When I was arrested, I lied about me.
- [45:04]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
Personas cannot.
- [45:09]
Mario Guevara
They are removing people that had no criminal record, including myself. Arresting and deporting people just because they are racist and tonsis.
- [45:20]
Mario Guevara (Spanish voice, direct quotes)
I want to know.
- [45:22]
Mario Guevara
So, no, if you ask me the same question, I don't think the same.
- [45:30]
Sophie Kazis
I know that you're separated from your family and from the whole life that you built in Atlanta for over 20 years. Given all, you know now, if you did come back to the U.S. do you have faith that you would be safe?
- [45:51]
Mario Guevara
I think that if I managed to return to the United States, first of all, I wouldn't take so many risks and do the kind of coverage that I used to do because I was reckless in thinking that I could do that kind of coverage close to ICE without being a United States citizen. I felt protected by the freedom of the press, by the First Amendment. But I was wrong. I would not feel safe covering ICE on the streets. I wouldn't do the same kind of work until I actually became a US Citizen. Maybe I could hire more staff, American citizen who are 100% bilingual for that kind of coverage, but I wouldn't do it myself. And I think that I can be vengeful. And if I return to the United States, I think that ICE would be watching me closely, that they are capable of anything. Actually, if I was in the US Right now, I mean, I would not be covering those protests because they have become extremely dangerous. They can turn violent. And I'm not a citizen, so I am an immigrant. My English is not as good, and reporting in Spanish exposes me, because racism in America right now, you know, if you look different, if you speak different, you're perceived as a potential enemy. So if they hear me reporting in Spanish, that's a risk for me. So I would not do that kind of thing. I mean, I'm a man of faith. I think that maybe God allowed me to leave the country before because maybe, I mean, I could have been killed during my coverage. They could have killed me. So I think that maybe my exit from the US and my return to El Salvador before all of this went sideways is because God protected me. I'm constantly thinking I could have been killed in the United States. These ICE agents could say that they confused the camera with a weapon and shoot me
- [48:17]
Sophie Kazis
today in Atlanta. I'm not aware of anyone covering ICE the way Mario was. And if Mario is allowed to come back to the country, he won't do that kind of coverage anymore either. One reporter I spoke to, the founder of a media outlet on the US Mexico border in Arizona, told me some of her colleagues, journalists who used to do ICE Watch reports, went quiet after Mario's arrest. The government's attempt to silence reporting on what ICE is doing. It's working.
- [49:09]
Host (Ryhread)
Sophie Kazis is one of the producers of Question Everything. If you have a second, we're looking for your feedback about our show. Please go to kcrw.com surveys and fill out a few questions about Question Everything. It'll help us know who's listening and what you want from us. As always, I'm Ryhread on Instagram B R I H R E EE D and BriaHread45 on Signal. My line is open for tips about attacks on the First Amendment, immigration abuses, chicanery going on in government agencies, and all sorts of other stories. Our newsletter, where we've been covering press issues and the current trials against social media companies is questioneverything.substack.com Also this week, question Everything won an Ambie Award. That's like the Oscars of podcasting for best reporting, which is awesome for another two part series actually that we did last year. About a year ago. It was reported by Robin Semion, our executive producer, and Produced by Zach St. Louis on our team. It was about Jeremy Lofredo, the first American journalist arrested by Israel. Robin dug into what happened to him and all the things that Israel did that were really messed up, but also some things that Jeremy and the outlet he worked for, the Gray Zone, did that were also kind of messed up. It's a really complicated story that I think is emblematic of a lot of what's happening in journalism and media today. If you're looking for another series to listen to, go check it out. It's in your feeds back from January of 2025. Start with blindfolded and Arrested on assignment in Israel. Sophie Kazis reported Mario's story with help from Jen Kinney, Robin, Simeon and me. Jen, Robin and I edited this series. Robin and I are also the executive producers of Question Everything. Our team includes Managing Editor Kevin Sullivan, producer Zach St. Louis, contributing editor Neil Drumming and Associate Producer Kevin Shepard. Additional editing by Sean Cole. This episode was fact checked by Marisa Robertson, texter and Annika Robbins. Mixing and sound design was by Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. If you're interested in partnering with us as a sponsor, please write Hey h e y placement theory.com Special thanks to our tape sinkers, Camilo Friedman and Jose Baez. Our interpreters Fernando Hernandez, Becerra, Macarena Funes and Sebastian Riveros, whose voice you hear representing Mario in the story. Adriana Tapia and Anna Oakes provided translation help. And lastly, thanks to Stephanie AH Inslee and Oliver Inslee of Inslee Law. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Tejal Algemera, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. We'll be back next week.
- [51:53]
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