The last remaining charges have been dropped against Mario Guevara, a prominent Spanish-language journalist outside Atlanta who was arrested by local police while covering “No Kings” day protests in June.
The Gwinnett county solicitor, Lisamarie Bristol, announced on Thursday that her office would not prosecute the three traffic citations laid by the Gwinnett county sheriff’s office following Guevara’s arrest in DeKalb county. Guevara was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) shortly after his arrest, and has remained in federal custody despite being granted bond more than a week ago.
“We understand the significant public interest in this matter and recognize that there are strongly held views on both sides,” she wrote. “Our prosecutorial decisions are guided solely by legal standards and the sufficiency of evidence to meet the burden of proof required under Georgia law.”
Guevara was arrested on 14 June while he was livestreaming a protest in Doraville, an immigrant-heavy neighborhood near Atlanta.
Other charges against Guevara for reckless driving and failure to obey traffic signs could not be charged under Georgia law because the infractions occurred on private property. The solicitor said there was insufficient evidence to sustain the remaining charge of unlawful use of a telecommunication device, issued after Guevara allegedly had been using his cellphone to livestream while driving.
The Gwinnett county sheriff’s office said it issued the charges after “Guevara compromised operational integrity and jeopardized the safety of victims” of a trafficking and child exploitation unit’s case by livestreaming their activities.
Guevara’s attorneys said they take issue with that characterization of his actions.
“In this narrative that they put out, they say he was livestreaming a police operation, and it was interfering in their ability” to operate, said Guevara’s attorney Giovanni Díaz. “When they went to a judge to get warrants … apparently there wasn’t enough evidence for anything other than traffic violations, so that’s what they hit them with. We need to speak about how unique it is to get hit with warrants for traffic violations a month or more after the alleged incidents.”
DeKalb county’s solicitor similarly dropped charges of improperly entering a roadway as a pedestrian, obstruction of a law enforcement officer and unlawful assembly a day after his arrest.
Guevara, 47, was born in El Salvador and has been in the United States for more than 20 years. Diaz said that his deportation has been administratively closed for years and that he had a legal work permit and was in the process of applying for a green card when he was arrested.
Guevara has worked for Spanish-language media in Atlanta for about 20 years, reporting on criminal justice issues. Guevara’s reporting has won awards, including an Emmy. His reporting has uncovered corruption at the Honduran consulate in Georgia and documented the effect of immigration enforcement around Atlanta.
He founded MGNews in June last year, focusing on immigration enforcement. Guevara recorded his own arrest, which was being viewed by more than 1 million followers on Facebook at the time. Since his arrest, Ice has shuttled the journalist to six different jails while fighting his release in state and federal court. A federal immigration attorney argued at a federal hearing that his reporting constituted a “threat” and merited his continued detention.
He remains in detention at the Ice processing center in Folkston, Georgia, about five hours south-east of Atlanta and just north of Jacksonville, Florida, his attorney said.