Immigration judge grants bond for Spanish-language journalist arrested during protest

ATLANTA (AP) — An immigration judge in Georgia on Tuesday granted bond for a well-known Spanish-language journalist arrested while covering a protest last month, meaning he will be free as the government seeks to deport him from the United States.

Mario Guevara, a native of El Salvador, was arrested by local police on June 14 while covering a protest just outside Atlanta and was turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement several days later. He has been held at an immigration detention center in Folkston — in southeast Georgia, near the Florida border — since then.

MG News, a digital news outlet that Guevara started about a year ago, posted on social media Tuesday that a judge had granted him bond.

Guevara, 47, fled El Salvador two decades ago and built a large following as a journalist covering immigration in the Atlanta area. He worked for Mundo Hispanico, a Spanish-language newspaper, for years before starting MG News. He was livestreaming video on social media from a DeKalb County rally protesting President Donald Trump’s administration when local police arrested him.

“I’m a member of the media, officer,” Guevara tells a police officer right before he’s arrested. The video shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with “PRESS” printed across his chest. Guevara’s video shows him standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, with no sign of big crowds or confrontations around him, right before he’s arrested.

DeKalb County officials have said at least eight people were arrested during the demonstration, with police using tear gas to turn away protesters marching toward an interstate onramp.

DeKalb police charged Guevara with unlawful assembly, obstruction of police and being a pedestrian on or along the roadway. DeKalb County Solicitor-General Donna Coleman-Stribling last week dismissed those charges, saying that while probable cause existed to support the arrest, there wasn’t enough evidence to support a prosecution.

“At the time of his arrest, the video evidence shows Mr. Guevara generally in compliance and does not demonstrate the intent to disregard law enforcement directives,” her office said in a news release.

But Guevara had already been turned over to ICE by that point.

The sheriff’s office in Gwinnett County, another part of suburban Atlanta, on June 20 said it had secured warrants for Guevara’s arrest on charges of distracted driving, failure to obey a traffic control device and reckless driving, saying that he had “compromised operational integrity and jeopardized the safety” of victims of a law enforcement case, investigators and Gwinnett residents.

An initial incident report says the charges stem from a May 20 incident, which it says was reported June 17. The narrative section of the report gives no details, and the names of two deputies are redacted under a section of law having to do with confidential sources.

Guevara’s attorney, Giovanni Diaz, has said Guevara isn’t a legal permanent resident but has authorization to work and remain in the United States. He has a pending green card application sponsored by his adult U.S. citizen son.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with other journalism and press freedom organizations, on June 20 sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to express “alarm” about Guevara’s arrest. They requested that he be released on bond and that the deportation effort against him be dropped.

The organization said Tuesday that it welcomed the order to release Guevara but is “concerned by the government lawyer’s argument that livestreaming presented a danger to the public by compromising the integrity and safety of law enforcement activities.”