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A Reporter Fights for His Freedom (Part Two) · Question Everything

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: The sheriff's office in his county, Gwinnett County, which was
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: not where he was even arrested or being held, had
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: slapped him with a bunch of traffic violations. Which was
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: highly suspicious because the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office was claiming
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Mario had run a red light and driven recklessly a
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: month earlier. Even though they hadn't pulled him over at
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the time, he'd gotten no tickets.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: When my family told me that the sheriff presented charges
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: against you, I said, why? That shocked me.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Why?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Why were they doing this?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: At the same time, an immigration judge had granted Mario
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: release on bond, writing that Mario was acting as a
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: journalist and should be protected by the Constitution. But I
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: still didn't let him go. They sought to stay on
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: that judge's order. If you're wondering where the hell the
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: First Amendment is in all of this, the whole no
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: abridging freedom of the press and all that jazz, well,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: so are we. Our producer Sophie Casis picks things up
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: from here.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Before we go any further, I'm going to jump to
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: the end of the story because it'll help me illustrate
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: how nefarious the government was in Mario's case. The end
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: of the story, Mario gets deported.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I remember very well. On Wednesday afternoon.
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: It was October 1st of last year. Mario was in
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: detention when he found out.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I was taking my dinner and the other email said, Mario, you're.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: On TV, Mario, you're on TV.
• 2:03
  Speaker 5: Now to some breaking news. We have just learned that
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: a court of appeals has denied Atlanta-based journalist Mario Guevara's
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: request to stay in the U.S. He now could be
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: deported to El Salvador as soon as today.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: I immediately came to the phone. I talked with my family,
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: and my wife was crying. And I explained to her,
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I already know what happened.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Don't worry. I already know what happened. Don't worry.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: On its face, the reason Mario was deported was a
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: bureaucratic technicality. Mario had a green card petition pending at
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: the time when he was arrested at the No Kings protest.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: Everything was on track. His lawyers say he was a
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: model candidate. The next step in the process would be
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: for the government to approve that petition and then for
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Mario to fill out a form called an I-485. The
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: I-485 is a requirement that was also impossible for Mario
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: to fill out because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services hadn't
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: approved Mario's petition yet. Mario couldn't do anything about that.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: Yet three judges in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: ruled against Mario's request to continue his bid to stay
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: in the U.S. Because, quote, critically, Guevara did not file
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: an I-485. Mario, in shackles, gets flown back to El
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: Salvador on October 3rd, leaving his wife and kids behind.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: Stay 20 hours handcuffed.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I was hungry, obviously.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: It's nothing easy, because especially if you are not a criminal.
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: But here's something else critical. One of those three panel judges,
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: the only one not appointed by Trump, by the way,
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: adds a little written coda, what's known as a concurring opinion,
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: to the decision that results in Mario getting deported. That
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: judge makes clear that Mario was protected as a journalist.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: just like the immigration judge who granted Mario's bond had
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: back early in his case. The appeals judge says this
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: is true for Mario even as a non-citizen of the
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: United States. He writes, quote, But he goes on, That's
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: besides the point. Quote, whether local officers violated Guevara's First
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Amendment rights by arresting him at the protest is not
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: before us today, nor is whether he was targeted for
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: removal based on his constitutionally protected activities. And so the
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: court never answers those questions. No court did. So that's
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: what I wanted to do. Find out Did the U.S.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: government violate Mario's First Amendment rights? And after looking at
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: this case for months, I think it's clear that yes,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: they did. I believe the government targeted him, detained him,
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: and fast-tracked his deportation based on his reporting.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: The... The justice system was unfair to me because having
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: to spend almost four months incarcerated like a criminal, not
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: even people that actually commit serious crimes do that. I mean,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: they post bail and they are released the next day.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: They kept me locked up for a long time. And
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: they deported me based on pure lies, and that is
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: unfair that they use... Lies to deport someone and to
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: keep someone in jail, that's unfair.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: From Placement Theory and KCRW, I'm Sophie Quezes. How did
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: the government do this to Mario? How did the First
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: Amendment fail him? It's an essential thing to understand as
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: the government continues to crack down on people who report
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: and say things it doesn't like. With a particular emphasis
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: right now, on people who are trying to scrutinize ICE.
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: Stick around. So that was the end of Mario's story.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Let's go back to where we left off. Mario was
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: sitting in detention, hours away from his family, after ICE
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: filed an emergency stay to keep him locked up. He's
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: wondering why the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office came up with
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: those dubiously timed traffic violations against him. And then he
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: gets a clue as to why. His lawyers tell him
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: about some emails they'd gotten a hold of between the
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office and ICE.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: When my lawyers gave me access to the emails between
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: the Gwinnett Sheriff and ICE, I realized that the sheriff
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: was playing their game.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Remember, within days of his arrest, an immigration judge had
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: ruled that Mario wasn't a danger and should be released.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: So ICE needed to provide a reason why Mario shouldn't
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: be let out, why he would be a danger. And
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: these emails show that ICE had gone looking for a reason.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: Mario's attorney, Scarlett Kim from the ACLU, says in one sense,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: this wasn't unusual.
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: In general, ICE will look to... someone's criminal record and
• 7:58
  Speaker 6: history and often use that as a basis for opposing
• 8:02
  Speaker 6: release from immigration detention.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: Scarlett says that's pretty standard, even looking for minor charges
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: like traffic violations. But in this email they got a
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: hold of, Mario's team saw that an ICE assistant director
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: had emailed the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office asking for any
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: warrants and also asking for, quote, any other investigative product
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: we can use to fight Mario's bond request. In other words, dirt.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: And the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Department obliged. They sent back
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: a four-page report with information ICE can use to argue
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: that Mario shouldn't.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: Be let free.
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: It flags the traffic violations. But what's extraordinary about this
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett report, it's mostly about Mario's reporting. In it, the
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office summarizes six of Mario's news stories,
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: videos he made about law enforcement, in public, between February
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: and May of last year, describing how Mario showed up
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: to law enforcement operations, filmed, sometimes livestreamed, asked the officers questions,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: spoke to observers, and sometimes Mario asked if some of
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: the officers were ICE. In other words, journalism. The report
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: says Mario demonstrates, quote, a pattern of behavior involving surveillance
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: of law enforcement and that his conduct, quote, contradicts societal norms.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: What I saw in the emails that I exchanged with
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the sheriff, the idea was to not let me out
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: because I was a problem for both agencies. I was
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: a headache for both. So the idea was to not
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: let me out. So they started working together. with criminal
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: charges and the other one to say to the judge, look,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: he's persecuting our officers and he's filming them while they're
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: doing operations. I said, give me more. Give me more.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: We don't want this guy to get out.
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: When Mario read Gwinnett's report, he knew it was true
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: that in the months before he was arrested, the first
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: months of Trump's second term, tension had been escalating between
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: him and the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office and ICE in
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: ways it never had in his 20-plus years reporting on
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: them previously. Mario had liked Donald Trump and his immigration
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: policies before his second term, his promise to arrest and
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: deport the worst of the worst, dangerous criminals. But as
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: soon as Trump took office again, Mario saw on the
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: streets around Atlanta that ICE was arresting people who weren't
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: violent criminals or criminals at all, Latinos who were just
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: on their way to work. So he started reporting frankly
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: on this. And he noticed ICE got much more hostile
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: to him and other reporters.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, the changes in ICE with the press, with
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: the Latino community, were horrible. When Donald Trump took office,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: They would no longer communicate with us, no more emails
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: about arrests, nothing. They started to do everything through social media,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: and they were bragging about these criminals that they were arresting.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: But they would deny us access to the jail to
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: talk with the detainees. Why? Because they didn't want us
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: to hear their version. They wanted only to reveal their
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: own version. They would deny me access to internal information
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: that I used to get. Everything changed. And it's weird
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: because The United States is supposed to be a country
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that has lost of respect for the press, but the
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: policies changed a lot when he took office. It was horrible.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I could feel the tension during the ICE raids. ICE
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: would cover their faces. We didn't used to see that.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: They were a little bit more aggressive. The officers would
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: get angry when they saw me When I was going
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to a neighborhood where my followers would inform me that
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: ICE was operating, I would already see suspicious vehicles watching me.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: They knew that I was going to cover that operation.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Once they saw me, if they were already arresting people,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: they would put on their masks and they would send
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: one officer to intercept me so that I couldn't get closer.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: That happened several times. Actually, I was addressed by name.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: They said, Mario. Mario, stay back, me dijeron. So they
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: knew it was me. And I started being afraid that
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I could be arrested. I told my wife, I think
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: at some point I will be arrested for covering these raids.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: And as he was covering this escalation by ICE, he
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: also started to see evidence that the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office,
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: the jurisdiction where he lives, was working with ICE more. Remember,
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett County has one of the largest Latino populations in
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: the Atlanta area. And Sheriff Kibo Taylor was elected on
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: a promise to stop formally working with ICE.
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: One of the first things that I would do is,
• 13:43
  Speaker 7: you know, take the sheriff's department out of that particular
• 13:46
  Speaker 7: agreement with ICE.
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: And he had. So if the sheriff's office was collaborating
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: with ICE more, Mario wanted to document it and tell
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: the public. He would livestream Gwinnett officers in the field,
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: trying to uncover any ICE-related activity they were doing. Sometimes,
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett officers told Mario the operations he was filming were
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: investigations into human trafficking, drugs, gangs, and cartels. But Mario
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: says he was seeing evidence on the ground that there
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: was something else going on.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Actually, they were looking for immigrants.
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: In 2024, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp had signed a state law,
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: HB 1105, that requires police to collaborate with ICE. If
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: they don't, departments can lose funding and individual officers who
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: don't work with ICE can get charged with misdemeanors. Mario
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: thinks HB 1105 was why Gwinnett was touchy about his reporting.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: They were being forced by the state to do more
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: work with ICE. When they'd promised their constituents they wouldn't.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: A rock and a hard place. Sitting in detention, having
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: read the report Gwinnett sent to ICE, Mario knew things
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: weren't as cozy with the sheriff as they had been.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: That was part of the conflict that I had with
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the sheriff that was mad at me because I was
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: exposing the agent's operations. I didn't know who was who
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and who was doing what. My duty was to report
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: what the community asked of me.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: That conflict, to Mario's thinking, was some standard reporting friction
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: between Mario and the officers at Gwinnett he'd been covering.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: But now, that friction had become an official document highlighting
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: videos Mario had made that Gwinnett clearly didn't like. For example,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: in April, Mario showed up to where some undercover officers
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: were doing an investigation. He's wondering if they're ICE. Some
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: are in plain clothes and unmarked police cars. Mario livestreams
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: from the scene. Mario's sitting in his MG News pickup truck,
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: parked near an apartment complex, filming a group of officers,
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: some with masks pulled up over their faces. One is
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: clearly in a blue sheriff's uniform, no mask. Mario zooms
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: in on one of their vehicles, a Gwinnett County Sheriff's
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: Office SUV, and then on an unmarked truck that some
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: of the officers eventually get into before driving away.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: He says, I haven't seen any immigration agents. The ones
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: I think I saw are from the sheriff's office, the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: Gwinnett Sheriff.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: But with those uniforms, those outfits, their faces covered, it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: all very confusing. Shortly afterwards, Mario says, he got a
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: call from a lieutenant at Gwinnett.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm Lieutenant Diaz from the Gwinnett Sheriff's Department.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: He said, I need you to delete a video that
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: you have just uploaded where the faces of my officers
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: can be seen. I said, the faces are covered. Yes,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: but you're showing the cars. I said, I'm sorry. If
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: you tell me that showing the face of a police
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: officer is going to endanger their lives, I will remove it.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: But if you say I'm showing their cars, I don't care.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And I did not delete the videos and that upset
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: them because they wanted those videos gone.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: I texted the number Mario gave me for Lieutenant Diaz
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: and got no response. And the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: didn't answer my questions about this. Another time, Mario was
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: live streaming what he thought might be ICE. The Gwinnett
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: officers on scene tell him, no, it's not ICE, it's
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: our officers, and this is a narcotics investigation. A couple
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: days later, Mario says, he went to the Sheriff's Office
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: to do an interview. He was with a new employee
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: of his named Alondra.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: The spokespeople for the sheriff actually said, OK, we want
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: you to do something before the interview. We want you
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: to delete a video you recorded last night of our
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: agents during a raid. What happened to that video? And
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I asked, what's wrong with video? And they said, we
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: don't want you to show the faces of our agents
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: because they don't want to be exposed. If you do
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: not delete that video, we will not give you the interview.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I said, Alondra, okay, it's time to go. We're not
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: going to do this interview because I will not accept
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: any manipulations like this. And Alondra, who was new in journalism,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: asked me, Mario, why this decision? And I said, because
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: they want to force me to do something for them
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: before the interview. And then the spokesperson for the UNHCR said, look,
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: I ask you because our agents are afraid because many
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: of them work undercover in drug cases and they could
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: be hurt. I said, OK, that's different. If it's a
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: favor like that, I can delete that as a courtesy
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to the agents. But you try to condition me in
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the interview. I mean, I don't work that way. I
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: have 25 years of experience. I'm not a newbie, so
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I will not be manipulated in this way. In the end,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I decided to delete that video. I deleted it even
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: in front of them.
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: All of this, the accounts of Mario showing up to
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: the scene, asking their office who was ICE and who wasn't,
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: uploading videos, the department asking Mario to take down videos
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: and him sometimes refusing, was laid out in that report
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett sent to ICE. All of that, plus reckless driving.
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: The four-page report to Mario was a personal attack.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: The Gwinnett sheriff and his staff actually did a favor
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: to ICE and they hurt me.
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: Why do you think that Gwinnett did that after you
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: were arrested?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I think it was reprisal because I would say, here's
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: the Gwinnett sheriff with ICE. They are working with ICE
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: to deport our people. When they started doing things with
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: the federal government against our community, well, I exposed that.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And that made me their enemy.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: This four-page report that the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office wrote,
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: in ICE's hands, this document becomes the single most hefty
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: piece of evidence against Mario. Evidence that is used five
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: times over the course of many months by ICE to
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: combat and delay Mario's case. Evidence that Mario is a
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: dangerous criminal who is unfit for release.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: It worked. What they did against me prevented me from
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: going out of jail.
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: Again, Mario's lawyer, Scarlett Kim, from the ACLU, on the
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: four-page report.
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: It's just a list of dates where he was showing
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: up to where officers were clearly conducting their duties in
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: public and documenting what they were doing.
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: Here she is reading from the government's legal arguments, where
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: they regurgitate all the examples of Mario's journalism from the
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett report to argue that he's dangerous and shouldn't be
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: released from detention.
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: On five separate occasions from February to May, 2025, the
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: respondent confronted local Georgia law enforcement officials and federal agents
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: during undercover narcotics gang and human trafficking investigations. Each time
• 22:11
  Speaker 6: the respondent filmed undercover officers, their vehicles, and the suspects
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: of the investigation and posted videos of the interactions to
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: his Facebook account.
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have you keep going.
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: Specifically following a February 19th, 2025 encounter, the respondent compromised
• 22:28
  Speaker 6: the integrity of an undercover narcotics investigation by posting a
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: video on his Facebook account showing the identity of an officer.
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: On March 3rd, 2025, the respondent recorded an undercover vehicle
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: with an officer behind the wheel, which resulted in the
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: officer having to move to a less ideal position to
• 22:45
  Speaker 6: continue his investigation to avoid further disturbances. The respondent again
• 22:49
  Speaker 6: posted a video of the encounter on his Facebook page,
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: On April 2, 2025, the respondent arrived at another undercover
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: investigation and filmed uniformed, plain-clothed, and undercover officers. Again, the
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: respondent posted this video to his Facebook page and identified
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: the vehicles in the video as belonging to law enforcement.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: What did you think when you read this part?
• 23:11
  Speaker 6: I mean, it's just completely absurd. He didn't confront any
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: law enforcement officers or agents.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: He showed up.
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: To a scene where law enforcement officers were conducting their
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: duties in public view, and he filmed what they were doing,
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: which is an activity that is wholly protected by the
• 23:32
  Speaker 6: First Amendment. This kind of reference to undercover officers, suggesting
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: that the fact that they were undercover is what made
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: what he was doing so dangerous. I mean, there's so
• 23:44
  Speaker 6: many issues with that statement. He was responding by arriving
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: at these scenes to folks in the community saying that
• 23:51
  Speaker 6: it was clear that there were law enforcement officers operating. Again,
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: if it's clear to anyone walking down the street that
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: they're operating, they're not doing a very good job being undercover.
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: And then just in terms of the legal principle, the
• 24:05
  Speaker 6: First Amendment right to record what law enforcement officers are
• 24:08
  Speaker 6: doing in public view, there's no exception for undercover officers.
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: And there's a really good reason for that because It's
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: not clear when you're filming officers conducting their duties in
• 24:20
  Speaker 6: public whether or not they're undercover or not undercover. I
• 24:23
  Speaker 6: think a lot of journalists and other folks trying to
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: film what government officers are doing in public will then
• 24:28
  Speaker 6: be thinking to themselves, are they operating undercover? Are they not?
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: How am I supposed to distinguish?
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: I've asked ICE and the Department of Homeland Security how
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: arguing that a reporter should be jailed because of his
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: reporting is possibly constitutional. They didn't answer me. They haven't
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: responded to any of my questions. Neither has the White House.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: But DHS has weighed in on X. Back in the summer,
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: the agency posted, quote, accusations that Mario Guevara was arrested
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: by ICE because he is a journalist are completely untrue.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: This El Salvador national is in ICE custody because he
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: entered the country illegally in 2004. Mario didn't enter the
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: country illegally, though. Court records show he came on a
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: valid visa.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: So that's a lie.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: And while he may not have been technically arrested by
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: ICE because he's a journalist, they certainly used his journalism
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: to keep him detained. And Mario told me, as he
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: was being transferred between facilities, which happened a bunch in
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: the early days of his detention, ICE agents would sometimes
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: talk to him. He says they knew who he was,
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: knew that he'd been reporting on them.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: They actually told me, why are you following us? Why
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: couldn't you just stay in your lane? You had a
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: work permit. You shouldn't have messed with us. So I
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: knew it was personal.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: Coming up.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: It's not there anymore. It's not there anymore.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: What do you mean it's not there anymore? A critical
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: piece of evidence in Mario's case. Multiple pieces of evidence, actually.
• 26:11
  Speaker 6: Vanish.
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: Once the government argued that they were incarcerating Mario because
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: of his reporting, that's when the ACLU took him on
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: as a client. Mario had been behind bars for about
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: two months when senior ACLU attorney Scarlett Kim says they
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: brought his case to federal court.
• 26:37
  Speaker 6: With what's called a habeas petition, and the habeas petition
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: sought Mario's immediate release from immigration detention. on the basis
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: that his continued detention by the government was a blatant
• 26:50
  Speaker 6: violation of the First Amendment. And I should note that
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: the administration has made its animus plane in July. For example,
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: Secretary Noem gave a statement at a press conference where
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: she said videotaping ICE agents is equivalent to violence.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Violence is anything that threatens them and their safety.
• 27:07
  Speaker 6: So it is doxing them, it's videotaping them.
• 27:10
  Speaker 8: Where they're at when they're out on operations, encouraging other
• 27:12
  Speaker 8: people to.
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: Come In the last year, Scarlett says, we've seen this
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: position from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem playing out on the streets.
• 27:22
  Speaker 6: Immigration agents acting like a secret police, you know, them
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: masking up, refusing to wear visible ID, driving unmarked cars.
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: I think their retaliation against Mario is of a piece
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: with this conduct, which is basically they want to be
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: able to conduct their immigration enforcement activities, their raids and
• 27:42
  Speaker 6: their arrests online. in secret. They want to hide themselves
• 27:46
  Speaker 6: and what they're doing from the public. And his work,
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: Mario's work in particular, was directed at reporting on those
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: activities and officers. And he played a really unique role,
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: as I said, because he was documenting it in real
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: time and for an audience of hundreds of thousands of
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: viewers who were particularly impacted by these activities.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: As they tried to get Mario freed, Scarlett and her
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: colleagues at the ACLU wanted to review the evidence Ice
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: was citing to keep him detained. Specifically, the videos highlighted
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: by the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office in their four-page report,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: where they're claiming Mario was breaking traffic laws and proving
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: a danger to public safety. So they go to check
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: them out for themselves. Well, they try to.
• 28:32
  Speaker 6: We were really keen to see the video footage because
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: we were hoping that we could actually review it and
• 28:39
  Speaker 6: potentially use it to demonstrate what the underlying facts were.
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: And we spoke to another employee at MG News who
• 28:48
  Speaker 6: was responsible for maintaining the videos and also Oscar, Mario's son.
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: They dug through and they said it just looks like
• 28:56
  Speaker 6: a swath of videos has disappeared.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know about all the videos they recorded. It's
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: not there anymore. It's not there anymore.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: What do you mean it's not there anymore?
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: It's not where? It's not in my social media.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: But you didn't delete it?
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: No, nobody on my team. Only four people on my team,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: me and three more have access to this.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Nobody deleted it. It's only those videos. The only video
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: for regular coverage was there. Only the video, specific video,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: was deleted.
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: The same video that the police had asked you to delete,
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: and you didn't, disappeared off of your social media?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: Even the video of my arrest. of my own arrest
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: during the coverage, when they protest, is not there anymore.
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: I honestly don't know what to make of that. I mean, it's... Bizarre,
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: highly suspect. We know that the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: was reviewing these videos at the time that it issued
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: the traffic warrant, so they had access to them at
• 30:01
  Speaker 6: some point in June, and then at some point later,
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: like I think in July, they've all disappeared. I mean,
• 30:07
  Speaker 6: it's really troubling.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: I emailed the Sheriff's Office about this, and they denied
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: removing or having any involvement in the removal of the videos.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: ICE didn't respond when I asked if they had done it.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: Some videos Mario says he's been able to re-upload. But
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: there are still some that appear to have vanished from
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: the internet altogether. These are the supposed evidence that ICE
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: was relying on to claim Mario needed to be locked
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: up for months and months. As time went on, Mario's
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: case was getting more and more attention. News outlets ran
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: stories with headlines like, Spanish-language journalist remains in ICE custody
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: despite being granted bond. And Atlanta reporter detained by ICE
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: punished for his journalism, rights groups say. The Committee to
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: Protect Journalists had been raising an alarm since June when
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: they wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calling
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: on her to release Mario, saying, quote, if Guevara's case proceeds,
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: it would represent a grim erosion of both freedom of
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: the press and the rule of law. In July, CPJ
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: also held a press conference on the steps of the
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: Georgia Capitol with civil rights lawyers, advocates, and a state senator.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Two of Mario's kids spoke. This isn't just about a journalist,
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: his daughter said. It's about what kind of country we
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: want to be. Every weekend, Mario's family would trek six
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: hours from Gwinnett County to visit him at the ICE
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: detention center in Folkston. Mario kept telling them, don't worry
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: about me. I'm fine. But he wasn't. ICE put him
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: in solitary confinement, made him go, saying it was for
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: his own protection because of his high profile as a journalist.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: But Mario thought it was just them being cruel. He
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: was in solitary for 69 days.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I said, I don't need protection. I want to be out.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I can't handle 22 hours in that little room. I can't.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: They didn't care. At the very beginning, I would wake
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: up and I was having palpitations. So they were like
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: panic attacks. I was scared and I was like, OK,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: where am I? Where am I? I started walking in
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: that little cell and I would count to 10 and
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: breathe deep and try to get a hold of myself.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: Mario's family was worried. Mario's son, Oscar, especially. He's 21,
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: the middle child. For the past few years, he's had seizures.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: They're the result of a difficult surgery. He depends on
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: his dad for his health stuff.
• 32:53
  Speaker 9: My dad is my superhero. And so seeing him in
• 32:56
  Speaker 9: that vulnerable state, it was scary.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It was scary.
• 33:02
  Speaker 9: They said that they had him in solitary confinement for
• 33:06
  Speaker 9: his own safety, quote unquote. But they knew what they
• 33:11
  Speaker 9: were doing. They were punishing him. for reporting on ICE operations.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: Despite all that, Mario continued to believe he'd be released.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Honestly, I fought until the very last moment. Because I
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: trusted American justice, I was convinced, I was sure that
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I was going to be freed, that soon a judge
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: or someone was going to realize that what was done
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: to me was unfair, and I was going to be free.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: Mario's lawyers had presented over 50 letters of support from family, friends,
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: and professionals. People who knew his family and watched his
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: kids grow up, members of his church who'd known him
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: for 15 years, vouching for his moral character and community standing,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: explaining that Mario's helped out as a Sunday school teacher,
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: a pastor making a pastoral appeal. The president of the
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: Atlanta chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists wrote, quote,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: even in the most humiliating and uncertain moments of his detention,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: Mario has carried himself with quiet dignity. And a former
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: Georgia state rep, too, who wrote Mario's journalism played a
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: critical role in elevating community voices and exposing issues that
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: might otherwise have remained hidden from public view. even an
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: employee of a Metro Atlanta police department, who called Mario
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: a valuable asset in engaging with the Hispanic community and
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: helping to build stronger relationships between law enforcement and Hispanic residents.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: Support also came for Mario personally, while detained, from some
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: of his police friends, who were clearly disturbed, if not
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: feeling implicated, by how the government was treating him.
• 35:07
  Speaker 10: Several of those people, when I was arrested, Several of
• 35:12
  Speaker 10: those people actually sent me letters and messages saying, Mario,
• 35:15
  Speaker 10: it's unfair what they're doing to you.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: We love you very much. We cannot understand why this
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: is happening, but you are a good person.
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: Mario showed me one letter, which he says came from
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: an officer friend. It quotes the Bible, Psalms 23, and
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: he writes, My heart is heavy for your incarceration. The
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: highest ideal of journalism is the pursuit of truth. there
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: is a reason why God guides you through these tracks
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: of righteousness. To find truth. ICE was able to keep
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: Mario detained for more than 100 days, the majority of
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: those in solitary, in large part because they had been
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: helped by the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office. Immigration attorneys tell
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: us it's easier and faster for the government to mount
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: a deportation case against you if you're not free. Yes,
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: there was a relatively new Georgia state law that forced
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: a certain level of cooperation between local departments like the
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office and ICE, HB 1105. But did
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: it really force Gwinnett to go so out of its
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: way to provide all these claims about Mario's driving and
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: his reporting? As Mario was sitting in solitary, on the outside, residents, reporters,
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: and politicians in Gwinnett County were pressuring the sheriff. Kibo Taylor,
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: to explain himself. He'd previously promised to work less with ICE.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: Now there was this new state law, House Bill 1105,
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: saying they had to cooperate more. How was his department
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: navigating this? He called a press conference to try and explain,
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: but he wasn't very successful.
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: There are a lot of problems, okay, with House Bill 1105.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: A ton of problems with it, okay?
• 37:06
  Speaker 7: I don't agree with everything that is in 1105, all right?
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: A reporter asks him.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: So that means that you are not working with ICE?
• 37:18
  Speaker 7: That's not, that is never what I said. We are
• 37:21
  Speaker 7: working with ICE in compliance with the law.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Okay. Okay? Yeah. So let's be clear on that. Yes.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: We are working with them. Yes.
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: Then, another reporter asks about Mario. Specifically, about the suspiciously
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: timed traffic violations.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Why did the.
• 37:39
  Speaker 11: City's office wait until four weeks to file those charges
• 37:44
  Speaker 11: that were dropped?
• 37:45
  Speaker 7: Because that was the best timing for us to get
• 37:47
  Speaker 7: the charges done. There was no hidden agenda to say, hey,
• 37:51
  Speaker 7: let us go out here and go do anything else.
• 37:54
  Speaker 7: In Mario's case, there was no hidden agenda to say, hey,
• 37:58
  Speaker 7: this is what we're doing here.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Let's wait four weeks. Let's wait. Let's do this. any
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: of that. When we felt like.
• 38:05
  Speaker 7: It was the appropriate time to take the charges, that's
• 38:07
  Speaker 7: what we did. There's no agenda there, okay?
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: There's not.
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: Sheriff Taylor insisted it was just happenstance, that they charged
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: these old traffic violations at the moment when Ice was
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: taking custody of Mario and looking for reasons to keep
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: him incarcerated. I contacted seven officers who worked at or
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: used to work at the sheriff's department, including the sheriff himself.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: wanting to know what they were saying to each other
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: about what their department had helped do to Mario. Only
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: one person agreed to talk to me and tell me
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: his opinion on what happened, a former deputy from Gwinnett,
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: Curtis Clemons.
• 38:46
  Speaker 11: Essentially, as far as I'm concerned, the current sheriff turned
• 38:49
  Speaker 11: his back on him and the promises that he made
• 38:51
  Speaker 11: to the community, that we would not be cooperating with ICE,
• 38:54
  Speaker 11: and it's very sad.
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: Clemons worked at the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office for several years,
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: then became assistant chief at another local department, then ran
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: for sheriff twice against the current sheriff, Kibo Taylor.
• 39:07
  Speaker 11: Obviously, there was no merit to this case, and I
• 39:10
  Speaker 11: think it appears that it was just the current sheriff
• 39:15
  Speaker 11: and the sheriff's department just looking to help ICE. I
• 39:20
  Speaker 11: think immigration had already made up their mind. He was being,
• 39:23
  Speaker 11: you know, deported out of here one way or another,
• 39:25
  Speaker 11: and I think anybody who would stand back and take
• 39:28
  Speaker 11: an objective view of of the situation, I think they
• 39:32
  Speaker 11: would probably reach the same conclusion that the sheriff was
• 39:36
  Speaker 11: collaborating and working with ICE in order to single out Mr.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Guevara.
• 39:42
  Speaker 11: I don't know if it benefited the sheriff some way.
• 39:44
  Speaker 11: If it was, you know, you scratch my back, I'll
• 39:47
  Speaker 11: scratch your back. At a later date or some kind of,
• 39:50
  Speaker 11: you know, agreement was made, we may never know. But
• 39:54
  Speaker 11: I find that very, very disturbing.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: In ICE detention, notably, Mario never heard from any of
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: his friends at the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I never heard anything from them. And I understand it
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: because they're afraid of losing their jobs.
• 40:15
  Speaker 4: And did you hear from the sheriff at all?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: No, not from the sheriff. I do blame the sheriff.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: That was a horrible betrayal. They betrayed me. You cannot
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: tell someone that you value their work and their effort. And,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: you know, whenever it suits them, they label you a
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: danger or a risk and you need to be punished.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I would have wanted to give them their awards back
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: and said, you're liars and I don't want anything from you.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: But I never had that chance.
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: After 111 days behind bars, Mario was deported.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: On October 3rd of last year. Before he was arrested
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: while covering the No Kings protest, Mario was on track
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: to get a green card. But once he was fed
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: into the legal system, even if he never should have
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: been arrested in the first place, as a reporter, under
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration's mass deportation policy, they saw that his
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: status was technically in limbo. And work permit and pending
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: green card application be damned, they kicked him out. Because
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: they could. About two weeks after he was sent back,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: Mario did a live interview from El Salvador. It was
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: hard to watch Mario, someone who'd been described to me
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: as a gutsy, pull-no-punches, rule-following, experienced reporter, so defeated. A
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: journalist pleading for his right to live in the United
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: States at the expense of his right to report here freely.
• 42:04
  Speaker 8: Mario, I want to ask you one more question. This
• 42:06
  Speaker 8: is for one of my colleagues. She wanted to know
• 42:09
  Speaker 8: if there was anything you would change about your reporting,
• 42:12
  Speaker 8: how you report, now knowing that you'd faced such serious consequences.
• 42:17
  Speaker 10: I will change everything. I will try to do different stories,
• 42:21
  Speaker 10: not following ICE anymore, because, you know, this caused me
• 42:25
  Speaker 10: a lot of pain.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: It caused me a lot of pain for my family, too.
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, even I fight for four months, almost four months,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: I lost.
• 42:33
  Speaker 10: Everything will change. If I come back, everything will change.
• 42:36
  Speaker 10: I make a lot of reports. Literally, ICE put their
• 42:40
  Speaker 10: eyes on me, and they did.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: You know, they win.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: A lot has happened since we last spoke. So I
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: wanted to check back on this and just ask you,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: what do you think about Trump and his immigration policies now?
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: I called Mario recently after ICE's surge into Minnesota, where
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: agents killed multiple people, one of whom, Alex Preddy, was
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: filming them when he was then shot. This has led
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: to widespread protests, And since then, more journalists have been
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: arrested for covering those protests. I wanted to know what
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: Mario thought of all this as he watched from El Salvador.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: My opinion has changed radically. At one point, I thought
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Trump was a good alternative for the country, for the economy,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: for many other things, even security. I mean, I support
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Trump when he kicks criminals out of the country, but
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: That's not what he's doing. He's going after innocent people.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: And I would never support him again because he has
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: shown his true colors.
• 44:03
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: From where you stand right now in 2026, do you
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: still think that ICE has a noble mission?
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: It's quite the opposite. That ended up being a lie.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Trump's promise, ICE's promise of clearing the country of criminals
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and deporting the bad hombres. That was a lie. When
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I was arrested, ICE lied about me.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: They are removing people that had no criminal record, including myself.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Arresting and deporting people just because they are racist. So, no.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: If you ask me the same question, I don't think
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the same.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: I know that you're separated from your family and from
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: the whole life that you built in Atlanta for over
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: 20 years. Given all you know now, if you did
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: come back to the U.S., Do you have faith that
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: you would be safe?
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I think that if I managed to return to the
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: United States, first of all, I wouldn't take so many
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: risks and do the kind of coverage that I used
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: to do because I was reckless in thinking that I
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: could do that kind of coverage close to ice without
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: being a United States citizen. I felt protected. by the
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: freedom of the press, by the First Amendment, but I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: was wrong. I would not feel safe covering ICE on
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: the streets. I wouldn't do the same kind of work
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: until I actually became a U.S. citizen. Maybe I could
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: hire more staff, American citizens who are 100% bilingual for
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: that kind of coverage, but I wouldn't do it myself.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And I think that ICE can be vengeful. And if
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I return to the United States... I think that ICE
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: would be watching me closely. They are capable of anything. Actually,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: if I was in the U.S. right now, I mean,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: I would not be covering those protests because they have
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: become extremely dangerous. They can turn violent. And I'm not
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: a citizen. So, I am an immigrant. My English is
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: not as good. And reporting in Spanish exposes me because
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: racism in America right now, you know, if you look different,
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: if you speak different, you're perceived as a potential enemy.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: So if they hear me reporting in Spanish, that's a
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: risk for me. So I would not do that kind
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: of thing. I mean, I'm a man of faith. I
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: think that maybe God allowed me to leave the country
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: before because maybe, I mean, I could have been killed
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: during my coverage. They could have killed me. So I
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: think that maybe my exit from the U.S. and my
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: return to El Salvador before all of this went sideways
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: is because God protected me. I'm constantly thinking I could
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: have been killed in.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: The United States.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: These ICE agents could say that they confused a camera
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: with a weapon and shoot me.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: Today in Atlanta, I'm not aware of anyone covering ICE
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: the way Mario was. And if Mario is allowed to
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: come back to the country, he won't do that kind
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: of coverage anymore either. One reporter I spoke to, the
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: founder of a media outlet on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona,
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: told me some of her colleagues, journalists, who used to
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: do Ice Watch reports, went quiet after Mario's arrest. The
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: government's attempt to silence reporting on what ICE is doing.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: It's working. Sophie Casis is one of the producers of
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: Question Everything. If you have a second, we're looking for
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: your feedback about our show. Please go to kcrw.com slash
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: surveys and fill out a few questions about Question Everything.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It'll help us know who's listening and what you want
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: from us. As always, I'm at brihreed on Instagram, B-R-I-H-R-E-E-D,
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: and brihreed. 45 on Signal. My line is open for tips.
• 49:11
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• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Our newsletter, where we've been covering press issues and the
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: current trials against social media companies, is questioneverything.substack.com. Also, this week,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: Question Everything won an Amby Award. That's like the Oscars
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: of podcasting for best reporting, which is awesome. For another
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: two-part series, actually, that we did last year, about a
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: year ago, It was reported by Robin Simeon, our executive producer,
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: and produced by Zach St. Louis on our team. It
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: was about Jeremy Lefredo, the first American journalist arrested by Israel.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Robin dug into what happened to him and all the
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: things that Israel did that were really messed up, but
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: also some things that Jeremy and the outlet he worked for,
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: The Gray Zone, did that were also kind of messed up.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: It's a really complicated story that I think is emblematic
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: of a lot of what's happening in journalism and media today.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: If you're looking for another series to listen to, go
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: check it out. It's in your feeds back from January
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: of 2025. Start with Blindfolded and Arrested on Assignment in Israel.
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: Sophie Kazis reported Mario's story with help from Jen Kinney,
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: Robin Simeon, and me. Jen, Robin, and I edited this series.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Robin and I are also the executive producers of Question Everything.
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: Our team includes managing editor Kevin Sullivan, producer Zach St. Louis,
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: contributing editor Neil Drumming, and associate producer Kevin Shepard. Additional
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: editing by Sean Cole. This episode was fact-checked by Marisa
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: Robertson-Textor and Annika Robbins. Mixing and sound design was by
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: Brendan Baker. Our music is by Matt McGinley. If you're
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: interested in partnering with us as a sponsor, please write hey, H-E-Y,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: at placementtheory.com. Special thanks to our tape-sinkers Camilo Friedman and
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: Jose Baez, our interpreters Fernando Hernandez Becerra, Macarena Funes and
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Sebastian Riveros, whose voice you hear representing Mario in the story.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: Adriana Tapia and Anna Oaks provided translation help. And lastly,
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: thanks to Stephanie A. Inslee and Oliver Inslee of Inslee Law.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Tejalaj Amera, Natalie Hill,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: and Jennifer Farrow.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: We'll be back next week.