ajcnews Among Mario Guevara’s most cherished holiday rituals in recent years was stringing up Christmas lights outside his Lilburn home as soon as the Thanksgiving celebration was over. In 2025, the Spanish-language reporter could only watch a video of his children setting up the lights without him. The reason for Guevara’s absence has been well-documented across national media. While covering an anti-Trump protest in June, Guevara was arrested by local police, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement picked up the reporter, a Salvadoran national, from DeKalb County Jail. He wound up spending more than 100 days in the agency’s custody — much of it in solitary confinement in a South Georgia ICE detention center — before being deported in October. About two months into his return to a country he left more than two decades ago, Guevara says part of him misses being held in an ICE cell because at least then he could see his family once a week during visitation hours. “Every day, I miss them more. Every day, I want to be over there with my family that much more,” he said in an interview with the AJC. Read more from his interview at the link in our bio. 🖋️: Lautaro Grinspan 📸: Getty View all 40 comments