For 73 days, Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara has been held in detention — shuffled between facilities, extorted behind bars, and silenced at the very moment his community needs him most. On Wednesday, he faces a rare bond hearing that could finally bring him home, he hopes.
By Nick Valencia | August 26, 2025
ATLANTA — For 73 days, Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara has been absent.
Absent from the rallies he once livestreamed, absent from the neighborhoods where he sounded the alarm about ICE, absent from the families who depended on his voice. He is not in the community he helped hold together.
He is in custody.
Guevara’s arrest came at the “No Kings” protest in Atlanta back in June. With camera in hand, he was covering the demonstration as he often did — narrating events in real time, contextualizing what unfolded for an audience that trusts him in ways they trust few others.
Police issued a series of conflicting commands, pushing the crowd toward the sidewalk. In the confusion, Guevara was pulled aside. The footage suggests he may have been targeted. His family believes as much.
To understand why, you have to know what Mario Guevara represents to the Latino community.
A Journalist Who Became an Institution
Guevara has been more than just a reporter. He has been a lifeline. Through his network of law-enforcement sources, he has alerted families to ICE checkpoints, raids, and sudden operations. In the undocumented community, he is both journalist and protector — an informer in the truest sense of the word. He has done this work for years, long before President Trump’s second term. And yet, it is only now he was targeted.
Guevara’s work has not come without risk. To some, his role as a conduit of information is precisely why he was vulnerable. At a moment when Latino communities feel the weight of federal immigration enforcement pressing hardest, silencing someone like Guevara serves more than a tactical purpose. It sends a message.
“Doing It the Right Way”
Critics of immigrants often default to a familiar refrain: do it the right way. Guevara has tried. Twelve years ago, his family said he began the process of applying for U.S. citizenship. He petitioned first through his mother, later through his eldest son. His application remains mired in bureaucracy. Throughout this time, though he has maintained a work visa and a legal right to work in the United States.
In the meantime, he has done everything asked of him. He prays daily. He pays taxes. He supports his family. He wakes up each morning moving in good faith. This is not the profile of a criminal. Yet he has been treated as one. For some of his critics, who have stereotyped him as a would-be Trump supporter, the irony of his treatment and detention is not lost on them.
Extorted Behind Bars
The cost of his detention has been more than separation from his family. Shuffled through five different facilities, Guevara has endured solitary confinement and even time in general population at the Atlanta Federal Prison. There, other inmates recognized his face. Some approached with admiration. Others saw opportunity.
One day, bad actors slipped him a phone with a message: $60. His family paid. The demands doubled. His notoriety — the recognition that once fueled trust in the community — became a liability behind bars.
When I spoke to his daughter Katherine inside their Atlanta home, she recounted the ordeal without self-pity. Only once did her voice falter. Not when she spoke about extortion. Not when she described solitary confinement. It was when she described her father’s impulse, even in detention, to help others. His acts of grave in captivity.
His daughter Katherine told me of a fellow detainee from El Salvador who could not afford a call to his family in Maryland. Guevara used his commissary funds to bring them down for a surprise visit.
When others lacked clean shirts, he bought them. What he was outside, he remains inside: a connector, a giver, someone who sees dignity where others see none.
That is the man being held right now. In Trump’s America, this is how we treat the best of us.
A Critical Hearing
Wednesday morning in Brunswick, Georgia, Guevara will appear at a habeas corpus bond hearing — an extraordinary chance, however slim, that he might be released. His wife and children will drive five hours to stand before him, to remind him that while the system has stripped him of freedom, it has not stripped him of family.
The outcome is far from certain. Immigration law under this administration is neither predictable nor forgiving. But for his family, Wednesday is hope — the hope that after 73 days of absence, Mario Guevara might finally come home.
His story is not just about one man. It is about the fragility of “doing it the right way” in a system designed to keep the goalposts moving. Some of his supporters might argue Mario Guevara has given this country more than it has given him. On Wednesday, an immigration judge gets to decide whether that still matters.
