Trump pardoned a perjurer. How about helping a Mexican journalist who told the truth? Donald Trump just pardoned a perjurer. How about helping get asylum for an endangered Mexican journalist who reported the truth about corruption?

Kathy Kiely | Opinion contributor

President Trump recently pardoned Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the onetime White House aide convicted of lying to the FBI and trying to obstruct its investigation into the outing of a CIA operative. “Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life,” Trump said.

To forgive is divine. But while the president is in the mood, he might consider a far more deserving candidate.

For the past four months (at a cost to the taxpayers of some $250 a day), Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been holding Emilio Gutierrez Soto, 54, and his 24-year-old son, Oscar, in an El Paso detention center, despite pleas for their release from the local Catholic bishop and many journalism organizations.

One of them, the National Press Club, last year honored Gutierrez and his fellow journalists in Mexico with its John Aubuchon Press Freedom award.

On Monday, the government is scheduled to respond to a writ of habeas corpus, filed by Rutgers University Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and supported by 20 news organizations, that aims to free the two men.

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Gutierrez didn’t go to prep schools and Ivy League colleges where he made a network of influential friends like Scooter Libby did. There’s another key difference between the two men: Unlike Libby, Gutierrez has never been accused, much less convicted, of a crime. Which forces one to consider whether he’s being punished for belonging to two categories of people the president loves to vilify: Mexicans and journalists.

Before coming to the United States in 2008, Gutierrez worked in the small Mexican town of Ascencion, about 118 miles southwest of El Paso. He reported on the official corruption that is so rampant in the country. For that, he was threatened multiple times. When a confidential source informed him that he was on a hit list, Gutierrez, a single father, took his then-15-year-old son and fled north.

The father and son entered the United States legally, requesting asylum as they came through a port of entry in New Mexico. After keeping them — separately — for several months in detention, immigration officials determined they had “credible fear” of returning to Mexico and released them to live and work in the U.S. while their asylum claim was adjudicated.

Eight years passed. Then the Gutierrezes finally got their day in court. In July, immigration Judge Robert Hough said they should be sent back to the country where the father has been threatened with death. His reasoning: 1) The elder Gutierrez might not be a journalist (despite the support of such respected organizations as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders); 2) The government of Mexico had made “quite an effort" to protect him from reprisals — for his journalism. The cherry on top of the illogical sundae: Hough argued that Gutierrez wasn’t eligible for the protection of the United States because he had not been tortured.

Dozens of respected international watchdogs, including the United Nations and Trump’s own Department of State, have documented that Mexico is one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists. The drug cartels and corrupt officials who support them don’t torture journalists; they kill them.

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For all of these reasons, Hough’s decision is on appeal. Nonetheless, during a routine Dec. 7 check-in, Immigration and Customs Enforcement handcuffed Gutierrez and his son and announced they were deporting them immediately — ignoring their lawyer’s request for time to get a ruling from the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals. Happily for the terrified father and son, the board issued an emergency stay before ICE managed to ferry them the short distance from El Paso to Juarez.

ICE then threw the Gutierrezes into detention, refusing to release them despite personal appeals from Bill McCarren, executive director of the National Press Club; Mark Seitz, the bishop of El Paso; and Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who represents El Paso.

This month, the Department of Homeland Security told the Board of Immigration Appeals it should throw out new evidence that the Press Club and its allies offered in support of the Gutierrez asylum case and uphold Hough’s decision because it is “not clearly erroneous.”

This is not an NFL game, where you need overwhelming evidence to overturn a bad call. Two lives are at stake. In newsrooms, “not clearly erroneous” is not a standard that gets a story published. You’ve got to get it right. And if you don’t, you correct the record. The government should do the same in this case.

It’s nice the president is willing to cut a break for a lawyer who told a lie to law enforcement officials in the USA. How about doing the same for a reporter who told the truth about corrupt officials in Mexico — and spent the past decade of his life paying for it?

Kathy Kiely is the National Press Club Journalism Institute’s Press Freedom Fellow and a journalism professor at the University of New Hampshire. Follow her on Twitter: @kathykiely