Three journalists describe arrests and deportation by ICE

DHS rejects journalist’s claim ICE targeted him for reporting

The Guardian’s reporting is part of a broader investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a press-freedom consortium involving staff from two dozen newsrooms in 16 countries. The project examines the secretive deals the Trump administration has struck with third countries — mostly in Africa and Latin America — to take in deportees the United States is unable to send to their countries of origin.

The independent photographer John Abernathy was documenting protests in Minneapolis, which The Guardian described as the frontline of the federal immigration crackdown, when ICE agents tackled him. A photograph of Abernathy on the ground with pepper spray running down his face captured the encounter. Abernathy told The Guardian he tossed his camera to another photographer as agents took him down in the hope of saving the photographs he had taken. “It deserves to be seen, what’s going on around here,” he said.

The US Press Freedom Tracker documented an increasingly volatile atmosphere for journalists in 2025, recording 32 arrests and 170 assaults on media workers, most of them during protests.

Estefany Rodríguez, a Colombian reporter covering immigration for a Spanish-language outlet in Nashville, was arrested in March and held in ICE detention centers in Louisiana and Alabama for two weeks before a judge ordered her release. Rodríguez had reported on immigration arrests at a local courthouse a day before agents surrounded her car, which was marked with her outlet’s logo, and arrested her.

Mario Guevara, an Emmy award-winning journalist from El Salvador, was arrested in Georgia by ICE agents while covering a “No Kings” protest in June 2025. He had lived in Atlanta for nearly two decades, running an independent Spanish-language outlet and documenting immigration enforcement operations on TikTok.

Guevara spent more than 100 days in detention, mostly in isolation. “They didn’t want me to hear the stories of other fellow prisoners and that’s why they locked me up alone,” he told Forbidden Stories.

Guevara was deported to El Salvador in October, while his wife and children remain in the United States. He has continued to report on US immigration enforcement from El Salvador and remains convinced he was targeted because of his journalism. “ICE had a personal campaign against me,” he said, noting that agents repeatedly asked him why he insisted on documenting their activities when he was not a US citizen. “ICE arrested and deported me because of my journalistic work, I’m sure.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security rejected Guevara’s claims, saying allegations he was “arrested by ICE or isolated while in detention because he is a journalist are completely FALSE.” The spokesperson said Guevara was arrested by local authorities for obstruction of law enforcement and deported because an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal more than a decade earlier. “If you come to our country and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will NEVER return,” the spokesperson said.

Journalists reporting on the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy have also faced hostility from authorities in some of those receiving countries, particularly where press freedom is already severely restricted.

In Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, four journalists — including three who were on assignment for the Associated Press — were briefly detained in February while reporting at a state-run compound where African migrants recently deported from the US were being held. The journalists were accused of criminal trespassing, and their equipment and phones were confiscated for a week. During questioning, authorities warned them they would be “crushed” and “disappear[ed] without a trace,” one of the group told the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Nalova Akua, one of the journalists detained in Cameroon, told Forbidden Stories he believed they had been targeted because they were exposing the impact of a collaboration with the US government that Cameroonian officials would prefer to keep out of public view.