Dec. 29, 2017 – The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals has agreed to reconsider the asylum petition of Emilio Gutierrez, a Mexican journalist who faces near-certain death if he is forced to return to Mexico. The decision follows a campaign by more than 20 press freedom organizations, including The NewsGuild-CWA, supporting his request for asylum.
Editorials in The Washington Post and the Houston Chronicle also urged the BIA to grant asylum. An online petition to #FreeEmilio has garnered more than 22,000 signatures.
Despite the board’s decision to hear his appeal, Gutierrez and his son, Oscar, remain in an El Paso immigration detention facility, where they have been confined since Dec. 7.
Gutierrez fled to the U.S. in 2008, after he learned he was designated for death because of his reporting in El Diario del Noroeste on looting, robbery and extortion by military forces in Chihuahua, Mexico.
Following publication of his reports, on May 5, 2008, Mexican military forces raided and ransacked his home. On June 14, he was informed by a source that the military was planning to kill him.
Fearing for his life and the life of his 15-year-old son, on June 16, 2008, Gutierrez presented himself and his son to authorities at the border in Antelope, New Mexico, where he asked for asylum.
After spending nine months in detention, on Jan. 29, 2009, he was paroled, reunited with his son, and notified he would be allowed to remain in the U.S. while his case was reviewed. Between 2009 and 2017, Gutierrez ran a food truck to support himself and his son, and periodically checked in with Immigration officials, as required.
Following a hearing in November 2016, on July 19, 2017, Immigration Judge Robert Hough denied Gutierrez’s request for asylum, questioning his journalistic credentials and suggesting the Mexican government would protect him.
Gutierrez appealed Hough’s decision, but in November, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Immigration Appeals denied his appeal. Gutierrez appealed yet again. Nevertheless, on Dec. 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials attempted to take Gutierrez and his son back across the border, despite the fact that Hough’s decision was on appeal and the BIA had ordered a stay of deportation.
On Dec. 21, National Press Club Executive Director Bill McCarren visited Gutierrez in the immigration detention center in El Paso, accompanied by Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX). They pleaded for a humanitarian Christmas release of Gutierrez and his son while the case is being adjudicated. But ICE officials insisted the two are “flight risks” and that the Bureau of Immigration Appeals was about to deny Gutierrez’s request for a review of his case. The next day, the BIA granted that request.
ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, opposed the review in a brief that focused not on the issue of reporter safety, but the question of whether Gutierrez’s request for review was filed in a timely fashion. Ironically, the DHS filed its brief late.
Reporters Without Borders has called Mexico the Western Hemisphere’s “deadliest country for the media.” Since 1992, scores of reporters have been killed, including 11 this year.
Most killings have been unsolved, but drug cartels and government and security forces have been implicated.