Hearing For Mexican Journalist Seeking Political Asylum To Continue

The United States receives nearly 3,000 asylum requests from Mexico every year, but only a small percentage of those requests are granted, according to an article published by the Associated Press.

About three years ago, a Mexican journalist and his 15-year-old son fled Mexico and sought asylum at a border checkpoint in New Mexico.

On Friday, he pleaded his case in front of a federal judge in El Paso.

“I have confidence,” Emilio Gutierrez Soto said in Spanish at a conference after the hearing. Confidence, he said in winning asylum.

His other option would be to return to Mexico.

“Journalists in Mexico for the most part are extremely vulnerable. They are murdered at will, their cases aren’t solved, the government does almost nothing to protect them,” said Michael O’Connor with the Committee to Protect Journalists.

He and Ricardo Sandoval Palos, with the Center for Public Integrity, are American journalists who have worked in Mexico. They came to El Paso to testify at Friday’s hearing.

“They don’t have the safety valve that a lot of us count on. And so our task, our hope and part of my mission for being here was to get the message across that we’d like to create that option for our Mexican colleagues,” said Sandoval Palos.

Gutierrez Soto said he received daily death threats for nearly two years while covering Mexico’s bloody drug war and writing articles critical of the military.

In June 2008, he was told soldiers were planning to kill him and that’s when he decided to flee with his son.

Carlos Spector, Gutierrez Soto’s lawyer, said he was frustrated with the U.S. government during the hearing.

“We did not complete the hearing. There were many procedural and technical maneuvers by the government that we had to respond to,” said Spector.

But he was hopeful for a positive outcome. “We feel we can prove that Emilio has a well founded fear of persecution because of his political opinion,” Spector said.

Gutierrez Soto said he was also hopeful that he would be a working journalist one again.

“It’s my passion,” Gutierrez Soto said in Spanish.

The final hearing is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 4.