Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto was denied asylum in the United States last week after nearly a decade of living in New Mexico. Gutiérrez Soto wrote for El Diario del Noroeste and fled his country, with his son, in 2008 after receiving a tip that his life was in danger due to his reporting.
The El Paso Times reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials plan to deport Gutiérrez Soto and his son.
The National Press Club and other journalism organizations issued a statement
Here is the statement of the SPJ Rio Grande board:
Journalists — a group of people whose rights are constitutionally protected in the United States — face an increasingly dangerous and too often fatal task in Mexico, and their killers usually go unpunished. It’s exactly under such circumstances that our nation’s asylum system should act. We’re dismayed that Emilio Gutiérrez Soto’s asylum petition has languished for years and that our federal government now intends to send him back to Mexico — a move that could be a death sentence. We plead for an immediate reversal of that decision.
