DHS Sends A Journalist Back To His Home Country To Be Tortured Because ‘Live Streaming’ ICE Activities Is ‘Threatening’

from the cruelty-above-all-else dept

America isn’t the land of the free. We abandoned that title when we returned Donald Trump to office — the same person who refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and, immediately upon his return to power, pardoned almost everyone who engaged in an attempted insurrection on his behalf.

The so-called “party of free speech” has repeatedly made it clear that the First Amendment means everyone should be subjected to their hateful speech, but will never be extended to those who oppose the current leadership and/or simply wish to document the evil acts of those currently in power.

The GOP’s extreme hypocrisy during both Trump administrations makes the usual hypocrisy expected of politicians look like a mostly-benign side effect of existing in a democratic republic. Under Trump, there’s nothing benign about the hypocrisy, which no longer contains even the minimum of plausible deniability we’ve come to expect from more competent, less bigoted politicians.

Activists, journalists, and the occasional opinionated college student have all been targeted for expressing their displeasure with this government and its policies. Turning ICE, DHS, and the DOJ into politicized weapons of administration vengeance has ensured maximum pain in return for acts that used to be considered protected by enshrined constitutional rights.

That’s no longer the case. Rights are now privileges under Trump, which means they’ll only protect people the GOP likes. For everyone else, there’s the constant threat of government retaliation — an act that has long been considered illegal by every federal court, but now is destined to become quasi-codified by a Supreme Court that is just as beholden to Trump as any of his Cabinet appointees.

This may be an exceedingly long preamble to the subject matter discussed in this post. But I don’t want any reader to skip over the reality of the current situation before they decide to start being bitchy and pedantic in the comment threads. This country is being destroyed from within by those “leading” it. These are the symptoms of deliberate internal rot. This isn’t just about some guy having his rights ignored and his life expectancy cut short by a deliberately cruel administration.

Earlier this year, the government took Mario Guevara — a native of El Salvador and a local journalist — off the street solely because he showed up to live stream “No Kings Day” protests earlier this year. Guevara was arrested for his documentation of ongoing news events and the government couldn’t even manage to secure the criminal charges it used to justify his arrest.

“The charges were dropped, yet he remains detained by Ice,” said José Zamora, the regional director for the Americas at the Committee to Protect Journalists, during a press conference on Tuesday morning at the Georgia capitol with Guevara’s attorneys and family. “Let’s be clear, Mario is being punished for his journalism. He is now the only journalist in prison in the US in direct retaliation for his reporting.”

The Trump administration learned only one thing from this blowback: to stock its prisons with more people in “direct retaliation” for “reporting,” ensuring Guevara could never be considered an anomaly. That it’s been unable to make these charges stick says more about the ridiculousness of its efforts than any belated recognition that locking up people for using their First Amendment rights might be a bad idea.

Guevara was placed in a detention center run by GEO Group, which has gone all starry-eyed now that ICE has billions of extra dollars to play with and needs more detainment facilities immediately from whatever government contractor is first to respond with literally any bid.

On top of that, Guevara’s phone was seized by federal officers, but as of the end of July, his legal reps had yet to see a warrant justifying its continued detention, much less any searches the government has most likely already performed.

Guevera’s case made the news, as was to be expected when the government arrests journalists (no matter their country of origin) for performing journalism. Just as predictably, the Trump administration has chosen to amp up the punishment of Mario Guevara because his very existence remains problematic for a government that occasionally has to pay lip service to long-held rights.

So, this is what the Trump administration has decided to do with El Salvadoran native Mario Guevara, who fled his country to avoid being imprisoned and tortured by local militia groups: under the cover of night, it has vanished him back to the land he fled, as The Guardian reports:

Guevara has been a media mainstay in the Atlanta area for about 20 years, after fleeing El Salvador to escape leftwing militias in 2004. Though he has a work permit and two of his children are American citizens, he has operated under the “administrative closure” of deportation orders for much of that time.

Immigration officials put him on a plane at 4am on Friday morning, family members said.

Guevara’s final destination is El Salvador, something that follows (as The Guardian reports puts it) the “longest imprisonment” of any reporter arrested for acts of journalism “in United States history.”

This latest act of betrayal of American ideals follows more than 100 days of detention, even though all criminal charges were dropped, leaving Guevara only with dubious claims about legal residency by ICE.

Speaking of ICE, immigration officers told Guevara this his documentation of public activities by public officials in public places was literally a threat to the US government in general.

Despite clearly identifying himself as press, Guevara was arrested by local law enforcement in June while reporting on a protest against the Trump administration near Atlanta. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then took him into custody. Prosecutors quickly dropped the charges after confirming he was complying with law enforcement, and an immigration judge granted him bond. Immigration officials, however, refused to release him, claiming that livestreaming law enforcement activity makes him a threat.

This is, of course, the current administration’s stance on documenting any federal mass deportation activity. DHS and ICE have both issued statements about the supposed increasing threat to officers (mostly to justify the never-needed-before mask use by federal officers) and the DHS itself has issued guidance to other law enforcement agencies stating that filming law enforcement (itself a protected First Amendment activity) is a threatening act worthy of criminal charges.

Because Guevara managed to attract international attention with his unjustified arrest and lengthy detention, the government has decided to punish him by sending him back to the country he left because he feared for his life.

That’s extremely disheartening because it means shaming the government is no longer enough on its own to provoke change. Sure, plenty of governments decide to become even more vindictive when shamed, but that desire for revenge often results in mistakes that can be undone by federal courts. Now, it appears even the federal courts are powerless (because the Supreme Court is unwilling to oppose Trump) to right wrongs by forcing the government to pay for its mistakes.

This doesn’t mean the government shouldn’t be named and shamed for it being shitty on pretty much every conceivable level. It’s still worth doing, because every bit of exposure has the possibility to help. But we should temper our expectations for positive changes. That’s not meant to be defeatist. Every bit of resistance is worth the effort. If nothing else, we should not be deterred from documenting this rise of authoritarianism as it’s happening. The truth still needs to be told, even if those who find it inconvenient are doing all they can to erase it from the permanent record.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, bigotry, censorship, dhs, evil, fascism, free speech, ice, journalism, mario guevara, mass deportations, racism, trump administration

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