#WatchTheWatchers
April 3 will mark the one-year anniversary of Manuel Duran’s arrest for covering a peaceful protest in Memphis, Tennessee.“I had my arms around him,” says one protestor who was arrested along with Duran. “We knew he had to be protected.”
Journalist Manuel Duran Ortega fled El Salvador thirteen years ago after receiving death threats for unveiling corruption in law enforcement and the judicial system. Then his unflinching journalism got him into trouble here in the United States.
April 3 will mark the one-year anniversary of Duran’s arrest for covering a peaceful protest in Memphis, Tennessee. A video shows that, while other reporters were left alone, Duran was handcuffed, as a protester kept telling the police, “He’s a reporter.”
Rather than respect the rights of a journalist, the Trump Administration is dead-set on deporting Duran, whose only hope is a pending appeal.
His Facebook Live broadcast of the protest for his online news site, Memphis Noticias, is an example of the kind of on-the-spot coverage that has become his trademark. When Duran was arrested, his live video went blank—and has remained so as Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to detain him.
By keeping a close watch on the activities of Memphis police and ICE, Duran has been called the “go-to” journalist for that city’s growing Latino community. As Memphis immigration lawyer Casey Bryant notes, “He was every place where something was happening.”
Ten supportive media organizations have jointly filed an amicus brief seeking his release and the reopening of his deportation proceeding. A petition urging freedom for Duran has garnered more than 110,000 signatures.
“Manuel Duran Ortega would not be in the situation he’s in, targeted for deportation, were it not for the fact he was doing his job,” says James Tager, deputy director of free expression policy and research for PEN America, one of the groups signing the amicus brief. And this sends “a chilling message to journalists covering the immigrant world.”
Duran’s case fits into the larger picture of the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown, which has extended to undocumented immigrants exercising their First Amendment rights. The U.S. government, as the NBC affiliate in San Diego reported, even created a secret database of almost fifty immigrant advocates and ten journalists who covered news of a caravan to the U.S.-Mexico border. In some cases, alerts were placed on their passports.
The Duran case also shows how U.S immigration courts act as a rubber stamp for government abuses. Duran is forty-three and undocumented. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is representing him, tells in court papers how in 2007 he failed to get notification of his deportation hearing date. The judge nonetheless issued a deportation order, which was not enforced.
ICE used Duran’s arrest last April on charges of disorderly conduct and blocking a passageway or highway as a pretext to deport him by dusting off the 2007 order. Although the charges from the arrest were dropped within two days, ICE took him into custody.
Duran, still in detention, was recently transferred from the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, to the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama.
When Duran sought to reopen his deportation case last year, an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals brushed aside the dangers Duran would face in El Salvador. He was within days of being deported last November when a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay while it reviews the case. Judge Beverly Martin, a member of the panel, wrote an opinion saying that Duran “has made a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits of his argument” that his case should be reopened.
Martin agreed that the Board of Immigration Appeals improperly upheld the immigration judge’s limited review of conditions in El Salvador. It even declined to consider reports about violence noted in the brief submitted by the media groups on grounds that such materials “do not report commonly known facts” and “are not official documents.”
[Update: On March 26, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit issued a decision that did not rule on the merits of Duran’s appeal but sent the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals for further proceedings that include issues raised that are within the the board’s jurisdiction.]
At the protest last April 3 in front of the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center in Memphis, Duran wore a yellow press badge around his neck as he broadcast on Facebook Live. “I felt it was particularly important that I cover the march as part of the Spanish-speaking media,” says Duran in his sworn statement for a habeas corpus petition that challenged his arrest.
Video footage shows that Duran tried to comply with Memphis police orders to clear the street—but it soon became apparent the police were zeroing in on him anyway. Duran had critically reported on the police during his eleven years working for Spanish-speaking news outlets in Memphis.
One focus of the protest was the collaboration between ICE and local police agencies that Duran had critically reported on during his eleven years working for Spanish-speaking news outlets in Memphis. Video footage shows that Duran tried to comply with police orders to clear the street—but it soon became apparent the police were zeroing in on him anyway.
“I had my arms around him,” says Memphis activist Spencer Kaaz, who was arrested along with Duran. “We knew he had to be protected.”
In his statement, Duran tells how when he showed his press badge, an officer responded, “I don’t care.” He was then placed in handcuffs—the only journalist among the nine people arrested—facing disorderly conduct and obstruction charges.
“I was not doing either of these things,” insists Duran. “I was moving to the sidewalk and the road was being blocked by police car.” The district attorney recognized as much two days later, when he dropped the charges again Duran, citing insufficient evidence. And even though Duran’s partner, Melisa Valdez, posted $100 bond the night of his April 3 arrest, he was held until ICE could take custody of him on April 5.
Gracie Willis, one of the Southern Poverty Law Center lawyers representing Duran, says a lesson of the case is that ICE should not rely on local law enforcement, which may have individual vendettas that result in constitutional violations. Duran’s appeal to the Eleventh Circuit says he was “was falsely arrested and turned over to ICE in retaliation for journalism that was critical of law enforcement.”
Duran had worked as a journalist in Memphis since 2007, a year after he fled El Salvador. He had a morning show, La Voz, on a local radio station before launching Las Noticias con Manuel Duran.
“He wanted to be able to give attention to local news, to be able to give interviews with families so that they could have the opportunity to say what kind of help they needed.”
“He wanted to be able to give attention to local news, to be able to give interviews with families so that they could have the opportunity to say what kind of help they needed,” says Valdez in her court statement.
Duran also worked with major Spanish-language news organizations, Mundo Hispanico and Universion Noticias, and in 2016 founded Memphis Noticias. “He was the most prominent voice for Hispanics,” says Bernardo Zapata, associate pastor for multi-ethnic ministries at the Bartlett United Methodist Church, near Memphis.
But the lawsuit says Duran ruffled feathers with his July 2017 report about a joint ICE-Memphis police operation. Memphis police objected, saying in a text message to Duran that the department wasn’t involved. Duran refused to comply with the police’s request that he remove the interview from his posting and retract the accusation.
The following February, Duran reported on the death of Bardomiano Perez Hernandez, a thirty-three-year-old Mexican immigrant whose body had been left in the back of an impounded van for forty-nine days. The death resulted when shots were apparently fired into the van in an attempted robbery of the people inside. In the aftermath, police didn’t spot the body.
In a series of articles for Memphis Noticias, Duran raised questions about the thoroughness of the police investigation and noted that Perez Hernandez’s ex-wife called their handling of the case “negligent.”
The Law Center is urging the reopening of Duran’s case so that he can show that he has a well-founded fear of persecution, should he be forced to return to El Salvador. That decision now rests with the Eleventh Circuit, which is expected to rule in the months ahead.
Duran had been a TV station manager in El Salvador when, in 2005, a rival station employee with connections to law enforcement had Duran and a colleague arrested, according to Duran’s account in his habeas petition. After a judge dismissed the charges, Duran broadcast a report on corruption in law enforcement and the judicial system, which he says drew threatening text messages that caused him to flee El Salvador.
Soon after arriving in the United States, Duran was arrested by Customs and Border Protection for being undocumented. He provided the agency with an address of a relative where he was staying. While Duran received a notice that he would have a court hearing, no specific date was provided. A subsequent mailing to that address informing him of a January 31, 2007, appearance in Atlanta immigration court was returned with “insufficient address” noted on the envelope.
In response, an immigration judge ordered Duran deported in absentia. But no action was taken until his arrest last April.
The amicus brief filed by media groups, including the American Society of News Editors, Associated Press Media Editors, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, PEN America, and Society of Professional Journalists, says Duran’s case raises “grave First Amendment concerns” and criticizes the short shrift given to the very real dangers faced by journalists in El Salvador. The groups urge a reopening of the case, allowing him a full opportunity to make his case for asylum, which would include showing how conditions in El Salvador have worsened for journalists.
A 2018 State Department report on El Salvador concludes, “There continued to be allegations that the government retaliates against members of the press for criticizing its policies.”
Natalie Southwick, coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists’ South and Central Americas program, puts it more bluntly: “El Salvador is extremely dangerous. Journalists who cover topics particularly about violence in the country, government corruption and gang activity find themselves as targets.”
But, as Duran has found, there are also considerable risks associated with practicing journalism in the United States.