The son of a journalist in immigration detention pleaded Tuesday for the release of his father, saying his dad has been his caregiver and source of strength since he underwent surgery for a brain tumor.
Oscar Guevara said in a Zoom news conference that since his procedure in 2021, his father, Emmy-winning digital journalist Mario Guevara, “has been the person who keeps me going.” Oscar also suffered a stroke during the procedure.
“He drives me to my medical appointments, helps me manage my care and, most importantly, lifts me up when I feel like giving in to the pain,” Oscar, 21, of Lilburn, Georgia, said about his dad, who is from Guatemala.
Guevara, who has work authorization through a 13-year-old asylum claim, marked 100 days in immigration detention Sunday. He was arrested covering a June 14 “No Kings” rally in Georgia and continues to be detained despite the dismissal of all criminal charges against him and an immigration judge’s order that he be released on bond.
Oscar is Mario Guevara’s oldest son and a U.S. citizen. He also has a sister, Katherine, 27, and a brother, 14.
Guevara’s case has drawn attention from free press and civil rights groups, who said he is the only journalist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and see the attempt to deport him as retribution by the Trump administration for negative media coverage.
“Mario’s detention is a true five-alarm fire for press freedom in this country, particularly for noncitizen journalists, but also for any journalist who covers law enforcement activity,” said Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Kim said the arrest and the attempt to deport Guevara are at the heart of a broader story of ICE’s acting as a secret police force whose agents mask up, refuse to wear visible ID and drive unmarked cars.
“Mario’s work was precisely directed at reporting on these activities and officers,” she said.
His attorney has said he entered on a tourist visa and applied for asylum.
However, the Department of Homeland Security maintains he doesn’t have legal authorization to be in the country, which DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin repeated in an email Tuesday. “The facts of this case have not changed. Mario Guevara is in the country illegally,” she wrote.
Mario Guevara operated his own online news service and regularly covered immigration arrests and other police and crime news.
In a court document, Oscar Guevara said the news content output on his father’s news site has been drastically reduced since he was detained, because his dad was the primary newsgatherer. He also said he has noticed that recordings posted on his father’s MG News page and his own Facebook page have disappeared since Gwinnett County seized his father’s phones, including his own video of his arrest.
Oscar Guevara said that though he has tried to help keep his father’s news site going, he’s not a reporter.
“Our community is less informed with my father not able to report” from detention, he said in the court document.
All criminal charges related to the protest coverage and some traffic violations that were added to the charges after Mario Guevara’s arrest have been dismissed.
The government appealed the order that he be released on bond, and the Bureau of Immigration Appeals refused Friday to release him and ordered him removed.
The BIA reopened removal proceedings based on his asylum case, which was closed 13 years ago.
DHS says that in 2012, Mario Guevara was granted voluntary departure and refused to depart, so he was given a final order of removal.
But Giovanni Diaz, an attorney with Diaz & Gaeta Law in Georgia, said that when his case reached the appeals court in 2012, Guevara’s attorney and the government negotiated so that DHS closed the case and allowed Guevara to remain and work in the country.
The attorneys have sought his release by filing a habeas corpus petition in federal court. A hearing was held, and a decision is pending. The BIA’s recent action also makes it possible that the court will issue a stay of removal until Guevara can get a hearing on his removability in immigration court, the attorneys said.
Guevara has a pending legal permanent residency application.
While his father has been absent, Oscar Guevara said, he has done his best to help his family, including financially, “but I am sick myself and often overwhelmed by my own pain.” His tumor and stroke left him with a stutter, periodic seizures and intense pain, he said in a court document.
He works part-time as a sports photographer for the Gwinnett Daily Post and also does photography for private events. His sister is a human resources assistant. But the earnings “are not enough to sustain us,” and they have had to rely on help from their church and a GoFundMe account to pay for basic necessities, he said in a statement.
His father was placed in solitary confinement, with just two hours a day of outside time, but has since been moved into the general population, Oscar Guevara said on the call.
“I feel like we are adrift without him,” he said of his father. “And no matter how hard I try, I cannot fill the space he left behind. I need my dad home.”