Why is ICE holding this Mexican journalist?
In early 2005, journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto wrote stories about the military being involved in a hotel takeover in a small Northern Mexico town. Gutiérrez was ordered to a face-to-face with a general who said, “You have written three articles full of lies. There will not be a fourth.”
Faced with phone threats, soldiers ransacking his house at midnight and a report that he was facing a Mexican military death plot, Gutiérrez and his 15-year-old son drove across the U.S. border with only $58.14 in the summer of 2008.
That landed him in an ICE detention center for seven months and began his decade-long bid for U.S. asylum.
Six pro-bono attorneys later, Gutiérrez and his son, Oscar, now 24, have been detained again after the fifth attorney failed to mail the required paperwork on time. This transgression, through no fault of the journalist, was the reason the government marked them as “removable aliens.” Only a last-second appeal kept ICE from dropping them back in Mexico in December, and they remain in the El Paso Detention Center as they wait on their appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals in the Department of Justice.
Gutiérrez’s story has attracted free press advocates who seek the father and son’s release from ICE detention and approval of their asylum request. These include Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the executive director of the National Press Club, William McCarren. In October, the press club chose Gutiérrez to accept the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award on behalf of Mexico’s journalists. The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle and PEN America editorials have urged the U.S. to grant both father and son asylum.
Mexico has become an increasingly dangerous place for journalists the past 10 years. Last year, only Syria and Iraq had a higher journalist murder tally than Mexico.
Yet, El Paso-based Immigration Judge Robert S. Hough gave four reasons to deny their asylum claim. First, Hough wasn’t convinced they would be in danger upon return to Mexico. Second, even if the fear were real, they could move to another part of Mexico, he wrote. But military officials are transferred and take new jobs in other locations in Mexico, which was the case for one of Gutiérrez’s harassers.
Third, the judge decreed that all of the witnesses and, even Oscar Gutiérrez, gave credible testimony in describing the soldiers’ hostility, but the journalist himself, whose stories angered the military, wasn’t credible. The judge disregarded Gutiérrez’s testimony that a friend told him there was a Mexican military plot on his life and agreed to provide a statement to the court but then dropped out of contact.
The judge wrote in the July 19 decision:
“Admittedly, the State Department’s Human Rights Report for 2015 states that the ‘most significant human rights-related problems included law enforcement and military involvement in serious abuses.’... (To warrant protection,) Such specific grounds cannot consist of a ‘hypothetical chain of events’ and in this matter, that is all that has been presented.”
Asked for comment, a spokesman in the office of policy for the Executive Office for Immigration Review wrote in a March 29 email: “Immigration judges do not grant interviews. EOIR does not comment on immigration judge decisions. The decisions speak for themselves.”
The National Press Club’s McCarren called Hough’s assumptions to support the government’s asylum denial “a dereliction of duty.”
Nearly 10 years ago, Gutiérrez stopped contacting his six brothers and sisters except for brief, cryptic phone conversations due to fears for their safety. Mexico, he says, is dead to him. “Now, my family lives in Las Cruces,” the New Mexico college town where they settled in 2009 upon their release from detention the first time. In Las Cruces, they were embraced by church members, academics and neighbors.
Molly Molloy, a border and Latin American specialist at New Mexico State University, testified on Gutiérrez’s behalf in an expert capacity. She has followed the case from the beginning and finds it tragic. “He wasn’t a muckraker. He’s become a symbol of something he never was. He was reporting what happened in a tiny town and made the mistake of angering army officers,” she said.
On May 3, journalists worldwide held memorials, commemorations and conferences for World Press Freedom Day.
The day was just like any other in detention for Emilio and Oscar Gutiérrez. They were awakened at 5:30 a.m. They gathered with hundreds of other detainees for breakfast and then got a morning break in the “yard.” In the afternoon, Oscar worked from 2 to 9 p.m. in the ICE laundry for $1 a day. This detention job helps him “to clear his mind.”
Gutiérrez has lived a decade of too much anxiety, heartache and defeat. After fleeing Mexico, he found work, and he thought he was lucky to get it, as a landscaper and then in a food truck. After arriving in the U.S., he didn’t miss being a journalist because he felt “let down” by his once beloved profession. When he was 18, journalism had brought him such joy. He didn’t care that in his first journalism job as a newspaper photographer he wasn’t paid for six months. He just felt proud to work for his hometown paper.
Detention has given him hours to reflect, and when he allows himself to think about a positive outcome, journalism as a profession is once again in his thoughts.
“Now I’ve started to miss it. (This experience) has made me realize the importance of journalism in society. We can’t allow that the government governs alone,” he said.
Sally Stapleton wrote this article for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She previously worked as managing editor for online content and photography at The Day.