Latest news with #DeKalb
The Independent
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Spanish-language journalist who documents immigration raids detained for ICE after protest arrest
A Spanish-language journalist known for documenting immigration raids could face deportation proceedings after police arrested him on charges of obstructing officers and unlawful assembly as he was covering a weekend protest outside Atlanta. Mario Guevara, who fled El Salvador two decades ago and built a large following as an independent journalist covering immigration in the Atlanta area, was broadcasting live on social media Saturday at a protest in DeKalb County when officers arrested him. The video shows Guevara standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, filming police in riot gear walking through a parking lot, before he stepped into the street as officers approached. 'I'm a member of the media, officer,' Guevara tells a police officer right before he's arrested. The video shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with 'PRESS' printed across his chest. Guevara was jailed in DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta, on charges of obstructing police, unlawful assembly and improperly entering a roadway. His attorney, Giovanni Diaz, said a judge granted Guevara bond on Monday, but he was kept in jail after Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed an extra 48-hour hold on him. 'He's not a legal permanent resident, but he has authorization to remain and work in the United States,' Diaz said in a phone interview, adding that Guevara has an adult son who is a U.S. citizen and an application pending for his green card. If ICE agents take custody of Guevara, Diaz said, his case would move to federal immigration court for potential deportation proceedings. Diaz insisted that Guevara has a strong case for being allowed to stay in the U.S. But he said that President Donald Trump 's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement has added 'another level of anxiety.' A spokesperson for the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, Cynthia Williams, confirmed that Guevara was being held for immigration authorities. An ICE spokesperson in Atlanta did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Guevara fled El Salvador with his family in 2004, saying he was beaten and repeatedly harassed because of his work as a political reporter for the newspaper La Prensa Grafica. They immigrated to Georgia, where Guevara worked as a reporter for Georgia's largest Spanish-language newspaper, Mundo Hispanico, before launching his own online news site, MGNews. Guevara's coverage of immigration raids, often documented live with help from a network of tipsters, has earned him a big social media following that exceeds 782,000 on Facebook alone. Like hundreds of communities across the U.S., DeKalb County saw crowds gather Saturday to protest the Trump administration. County officials said in a news release that police were dispatched to confront protestors marching toward an interstate onramp. Officers fired tear gas and made at least eight arrests. Guevara was photographed at that protest by news outlets including The Associated Press. The video he recorded leading up to his arrest shows him standing beside a shopping center a distance from police vehicles blocking a roadway. Guevara doesn't appear to be near any crowds or confrontations when police arrested him. Diaz said Guevara is well-known by local and federal authorities after his years of documenting immigration enforcement. 'He's been doing this type of work for 20-plus years, and now he gets detained," Diaz said. 'It's concerning. He's a member of the press. And he doesn't seem to be committing any crime.' ___ Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
Spanish-language journalist who documents immigration raids detained for ICE after protest arrest
A Spanish-language journalist known for documenting immigration raids could face deportation proceedings after police arrested him on charges of obstructing officers and unlawful assembly as he was covering a weekend protest outside Atlanta. Mario Guevara, who fled El Salvador two decades ago and built a large following as an independent journalist covering immigration in the Atlanta area, was broadcasting live on social media Saturday at a protest in DeKalb County when officers arrested him. The video shows Guevara standing on a sidewalk with other journalists, filming police in riot gear walking through a parking lot, before he stepped into the street as officers approached. 'I'm a member of the media, officer,' Guevara tells a police officer right before he's arrested. The video shows Guevara wearing a bright red shirt under a protective vest with 'PRESS' printed across his chest. Guevara was jailed in DeKalb County, which includes parts of Atlanta, on charges of obstructing police, unlawful assembly and improperly entering a roadway. His attorney, Giovanni Diaz, said a judge granted Guevara bond on Monday, but he was kept in jail after Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed an extra 48-hour hold on him. 'He's not a legal permanent resident, but he has authorization to remain and work in the United States,' Diaz said in a phone interview, adding that Guevara has an adult son who is a U.S. citizen and an application pending for his green card. If ICE agents take custody of Guevara, Diaz said, his case would move to federal immigration court for potential deportation proceedings. Diaz insisted that Guevara has a strong case for being allowed to stay in the U.S. But he said that President Donald Trump's aggressive approach to immigration enforcement has added 'another level of anxiety.' A spokesperson for the DeKalb County Sheriff's Office, Cynthia Williams, confirmed that Guevara was being held for immigration authorities. An ICE spokesperson in Atlanta did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Guevara fled El Salvador with his family in 2004, saying he was beaten and repeatedly harassed because of his work as a political reporter for the newspaper La Prensa Grafica. They immigrated to Georgia, where Guevara worked as a reporter for Georgia's largest Spanish-language newspaper, Mundo Hispanico, before launching his own online news site, MGNews. Guevara's coverage of immigration raids, often documented live with help from a network of tipsters, has earned him a big social media following that exceeds 782,000 on Facebook alone. Like hundreds of communities across the U.S., DeKalb County saw crowds gather Saturday to protest the Trump administration. County officials said in a news release that police were dispatched to confront protestors marching toward an interstate onramp. Officers fired tear gas and made at least eight arrests. Guevara was photographed at that protest by news outlets including The Associated Press. The video he recorded leading up to his arrest shows him standing beside a shopping center a distance from police vehicles blocking a roadway. Guevara doesn't appear to be near any crowds or confrontations when police arrested him. Diaz said Guevara is well-known by local and federal authorities after his years of documenting immigration enforcement. 'He's been doing this type of work for 20-plus years, and now he gets detained,' Diaz said. 'It's concerning. He's a member of the press. And he doesn't seem to be committing any crime.' ___ Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Spanish-language journalist to be turned over to Ice after protest arrest
Mario Guevara, a prominent Spanish-language journalist in metro Atlanta who frequently covers Immigration and customs enforcement raids, will be turned over to Ice detention after being arrested by local police while covering the 'No Kings' protests. Guevara, 47, was born in El Salvador and has been in the United States for more than 20 years. He recorded his own arrest Saturday during a raucous street protest in the Embry Hills area of north DeKalb county, an Atlanta suburban neighborhood with a large Latino population. The protest ended with riot police throwing teargas and marching protesters down the street after declaring an unlawful assembly. About 35 minutes into the video Guevara was live-streaming on Facebook to more than 1 million people, he can be first seen on the sidewalk, then backing away from a police officer approaching him. As he backed into the street, two other police officers immediately arrested him. 'By any chance, are we still live?' he asks in Spanish, in the darkness of a van at the scene. 'Someone please call the lawyer Giovanni Díaz, my lawyer, so he can pull the strings he needs to pull. Yes, we're still live, right? Please, someone let lawyer Giovanni Díaz know what just happened.' The arresting officer is from the Doraville police department, a municipality which holds part of Atlanta's famed Buford Highway strip of immigrant-oriented businesses. A second officer approaching Guevara in the video is wearing a gas mask and cannot be identified from his uniform. Police charged Guevara as a pedestrian improperly entering a roadway, obstruction of a law enforcement officer and unlawful assembly. A municipal judge released Guevara on Monday on a recognisance bond – customary with misdemeanor charges. But jail staff said he would be transferred instead to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The law office Diaz & Gaeta Law, which represents Guevara, declined to comment. A request for information from Doraville police has gone unanswered. Police facilitated demonstrator's march at an earlier protest in the nearby suburban city of Tucker, in which thousands of people walked across an overpass above I-285–Atlanta's main ring highway–with banners and signs. The earlier 'No Kings' protest had been organized and promoted by Indivisible and 50501. Conversely, organizers from the Party of Socialism and Liberation led the Embry Hills protest. According to a release from the DeKalb Police Department, police declared an unlawful assembly after they believed marchers would attempt to approach the highway on the on-ramp. Police arrested eight people including Guevara at the protest on Saturday. Ted Terry, a DeKalb county commissioner, asked the county's staff to investigate the circumstances around the use of teargas at the event. 'The decision to deploy teargas – particularly in a neighborhood context with nearby homes and businesses – raises serious questions about the proportionality and justification of the county's response to peaceful civil action,' he wrote. A spokesperson for Ice in Atlanta could not immediately confirm the conditions of the immigration hold or whether Guevara faces deportation. As a journalist with Diario CoLatino in El Salvador, he fled the country in 2004 one step ahead of threats from leftwing paramilitary groups. It took him seven years to get his first asylum hearing before a judge, the journalist told Spanish-language wire service Agencia EFE in the Los Angeles-based publication La Opinión in 2012. He described the arrest of his wife after an error in the immigration system. 'The hardest part for me was seeing my three children cry as she was taken away, and me being powerless to give them the comfort and protection they need,' he said in Spanish in the interview. Guevara has worked for Spanish-language media such as Atlanta Latino and Mundo Hispanico in metro Atlanta since, reporting on criminal justice issues. Guevara's reporting has won awards, including an Emmy. His reporting has uncovered corruption at the Honduran consulate in Georgia and documented the effect of immigration enforcement around Atlanta. He founded MGNews in June last year, focusing on immigration enforcement, and quickly built a sizable following. At the time of his arrest Saturday, Guevara was live-streaming on Facebook to more than 1 million viewers, outdrawing CNN and Fox News combined on a Saturday afternoon.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Regional airports say they haven't been contacted about anticipated influx of flyers for World Cup
We're one year away from the FIFA World Cup matches here in Atlanta. Fans will come in from all over the world, and while most will fly commercial, many will come in on corporate or executive jets. The Metro Atlanta Chamber said nearly 1,600 private jets flew into metro Atlanta for the Super Bowl. Considering each one of these matches is a potential Super Bowl, those jets have to get parked somewhere. But so far, the airports around metro Atlanta say they haven't heard of a plan. Matthew Smith is not only the airport division director for Gwinnett County's Briscoe Field, he's also the president of the Georgia Airport Association. He's anticipating corporate and executive jets will fly into metro Atlanta for the big FIFA World Cup matches. TRENDING STORIES: Metro Atlanta parents 'made a dumb decision' by giving 1-year-old beer, report says SCOTUS rules on lawsuit from Atlanta family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI Family finds someone else buried alongside their loved one in southwest GA cemetery 'Those jets have to go somewhere,' Smith told Channel 2's Richard Elliot. 'We can handle quite a bit. During the Super Bowl, we had well over 50 jets here.' The major regional airports in the Atlanta area include Fulton's Charlie Brown, DeKalb's PDK, Cobb's McCollum, Gwinnett's Briscoe and the Atlanta Speedway's airport. Smith said, so far, the Atlanta World Cup Hosting Committee hasn't reached out to any of them, but he expects they will. 'I'm sure at some point they'll include us just to make sure we have the capacity to handle what they expect to come in on the private side,' Smith said. Hartsfield-Jackson said it's prepared to handle some through signature and private suites, but any overflow would have to go elsewhere. Cobb's McCollum Field right now said it's more focused on handling flights for this summer's MLB All-Star game than the World Cup, but they added, 'Airport management is currently working with local, state and federal partners to coordinate planning efforts for the upcoming significant special events.' Smith said the regional airports are standing by to help. 'We've handled things like this before. We've had the Super Bowl. We've had the Olympics. We've had the NCAA Finals, and you know, football championships here. So, it's not something we're not used to. We typically can handle it with existing personnel and operations,' Smith said. Smith said Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton County's regional airports all have customs agents if needed.
TechCrunch
03-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Meta buys a nuclear power plant (more or less)
Meta announced Tuesday morning that it was paying billions of dollars to keep an Illinois nuclear power plant running through 2047. The social media company will buy all the 'clean energy attributes' of Constellation Energy's Clinton Clean Energy Center, a 1.1 gigawatt nuclear power plant in central Illinois, starting in June 2027. Electricity will still flow to the local grid, so Meta's purchase won't directly power one of its data centers, though the company does have one about two hours north of Clinton in DeKalb. Rather, the deal is a bit of carbon accounting to lower the company's overall climate impact. It doesn't reduce emissions on the grid, but prevents them from potentially increasing. Neither company disclosed exact financial terms, but the multi-billion-dollar deal will help Constellation relicense the plant and guarantee a customer for the duration of that license extension. Big tech companies — Meta included — have become vocal backers of the fission industry recently. Before the recent boom in data center construction, nuclear reactors had faced a grim future as cheap wind, solar, and natural gas undercut their power-generating costs. But the surge in AI and cloud computing has sent tech companies searching for power, which in turn has led to a string of investments in nuclear startups. Meta and Constellation have alluded to the deal as a way to save the nuclear power plant from shutdown, though neither said it was at imminent risk of closure. The power provider initially planned to shut down the Clinton reactor in June 2017 as it faced stiff competition from cheap natural gas, but Illinois legislators stepped in with subsidies that encouraged Constellation to keep the lights on. Those subsidies are set to expire in 2027, and Constellation says the Meta deal will help prevent the closure. But since 2017, Constellation has not threatened to shut down the Clinton power plant. Instead, in 2022, the company said it would apply to extend the reactor's operating license through 2047. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW TechCrunch has asked Constellation about its plans for the Clinton power plant before the Meta deal materialized, and we'll update this article if we receive a reply. It's likely that the company would have turned to ratepayers, something Constellation hints at in today's press release: The deal with Meta 'essentially replaces the ZEC [zero-emission credit] program and ensures long-term operations of the plant without ratepayer support.' Meta and its big tech peers have fallen head over heels for nuclear power lately. Meta itself announced earlier this year that it was soliciting proposals for new nuclear power plants that would generate between 1–4 gigawatts of power. Today, the company said it has received over 50 qualified submissions for sites in more than 20 states. With the Meta deal, Constellation has landed another big tech patron for its nuclear fleet. In September, the power provider said that it would restart a reactor at Three Mile Island after Microsoft agreed to buy all the resulting power.
