Will Trump help a truth-teller in danger?
Mexican journalist more deserving than Libby
President Trump recently pardoned Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the onetime White House aide convicted of lying to the FBI and trying to obstruct its investigation into the outing of a CIA operative. “Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life,” Trump said.
To forgive is divine. But while the president is in the mood, he might consider a far more deserving candidate.
For the past four months (at a cost to the taxpayers of some $250 a day), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have been holding Emilio Gutierrez Soto, 54, and his son Oscar, 24, in an El Paso detention center, despite pleas for their release from the local Catholic bishop and many journalism organizations. One of them, the National Press Club, last year honored Gutierrez and other Mexican journalists with its John Aubuchon Press Freedom award.
Unlike Libby, Gutierrez didn’t go to prep schools and Ivy League colleges where he made a network of influential friends. Also unlike Libby, Gutierrez has never been accused, much less convicted, of a crime. Which forces one to consider whether he’s being punished for belonging to two categories of people the president loves to vilify: Mexicans and journalists.
Before coming to the United States in 2008, Gutierrez worked in the small Mexican town of Ascencion, about 118 miles southwest of El Paso. He reported on the official corruption that is so rampant in the country. For that, he was threatened multiple times. When a confidential source informed him he was on a hit list, the single father took his then-15-year-old son and fled north.
The father and son entered the United States legally, requesting asylum as they came through a port of entry in New Mexico. After detaining them separately for several months, officials determined they had “credible fear” of returning to Mexico and released them to live and work in the U.S. while their asylum claim was adjudicated.
Eight years passed. Then the Gutier- rezes finally got their day in court. In July, immigration Judge Robert Hough said they should be sent back to Mexico. His reasoning: The elder Gutierrez might not be a journalist (despite the support of organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders); the Mexican government had made “quite an effort" to protect him from reprisals (for his journalism); and Gutierrez had not been tortured.
Dozens of international watchdogs, including the United Nations and Trump’s own State Department, have documented that Mexico is one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. The drug cartels and corrupt officials who support them don’t torture journalists; they kill them.
Hough’s decision is on appeal. Nonetheless, during a routine Dec. 7 check-in, ICE handcuffed Gutierrez and his son and said they were deporting them immediately. Happily, the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals issued an emergency stay before ICE managed to ferry the pair from El Paso to Juarez.
ICE then threw them into detention and refused to release them despite personal appeals from Bill McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club; Mark Seitz, the bishop of El Paso; and Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who represents El Paso.
This month, the government told the appeals board it should throw out new evidence the Press Club and its allies offered in support of the Gutierrez asylum case and uphold Hough’s decision because it is “not clearly erroneous.”
This is not an NFL game, where you need overwhelming evidence to overturn a bad call. Two lives are at stake. In newsrooms, “not clearly erroneous” is not a standard that gets a story published. You’ve got to get it right. And if you don’t, you correct the record. The government should do the same here.
It’s nice the president is willing to cut a break for a lawyer who told a lie to law enforcement officials in the USA. How about doing the same for a reporter who told the truth about corrupt officials in Mexico?