Atlanta journalist fights deportation from Ice jail despite dropped charges: ‘I’m seeing what absolute power can do’

A Salvadorian reporter with an audience of millions, Mario Guevara was arrested while livestreaming a protest against Trump in June - and is still struggling for freedom

Prosecutors dropped the last remaining charges against Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara last week after he was arrested while livestreaming a protest in June. But the influential Salvadorian reporter remains penned up in a south Georgia detention center, fending off a deportation case, jail house extortionists and despair, people familiar with his situation told the Guardian.

Donald Trump's administration has been extreme in unprecedented ways to undocumented immigrants. But Guevara's treatment is a special case. Shuttled between five jail cells in Georgia since his arrest while covering the No Kings Day" protests, the 20-plus-years veteran journalist's sin was to document the undocumented and the way Trump's agents have been hunting them down.