Speaking from immigration lockup, Manuel Duran says life is in danger if he's deported

Daniel Connolly | Memphis Commercial Appeal

Detained journalist Manuel Duran told reporters in a conference call Tuesday that his life is in danger if he's sent back to his native country, El Salvador.

"From the moment I left my country, it was because of persecution, because of threats for the work that I was doing as a journalist," he said in Spanish. He said he's made this point over and over to his attorneys and others. "I can't go back to my country."

Duran spoke from the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, in a conference call arranged by his attorneys with the Southern Poverty Law Center and advocacy group Latino Memphis.

Duran worked for years as a broadcaster for Spanish-language radio stations in Memphis. More recently, he had been running his own news outlet, Memphis Noticias.

Since Duran's arrest at a protest in April, he has spent more than seven months locked up, most of that time in Louisiana.

His is one of the highest-profile immigration cases in the Memphis area since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 — and it may soon be over.

If Duran's appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit fails, he'll be deported to El Salvador, possibly within two weeks, his legal team said in the conference call.

Attorneys are now trying to get the 11th Circuit to put a stay of deportation in place, said lawyer Michelle Lapointe with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

If they succeed, they'll file more briefs to ask the court to reopen Duran's immigration case and ask for asylum.

No toilet paper for two weeks, Duran says

Duran complained in conditions in detention, including poor food. He also said he was chained up like a criminal when he was transported from Memphis to Louisiana early this year.

Duran said conditions were particularly bad when he was briefly transferred earlier this year to Pine Prairie, another detention center in Louisiana.

"The treatment was terrible. Two weeks without giving toilet paper to the detainees," Duran said on the phone call.





He said that conditions were particularly bad right after he arrived at Pine Prairie. "We arrived at that jail and they kept us in a 'cooler,' they call it, a super-cold room, for approximately two days without blankets."

"It was terribly cold. And the place was filthy. You couldn't use the toilets, you couldn't use the bathrooms because everything was too dirty."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Bryan D. Cox responded by email. "Persons under arrest are generally handcuffed while in transit between facilities — that’s a standard practice for any law enforcement agency.

"As for facility-specific allegations regarding food and hygiene, those are categorically false allegations.

"The facility is routinely inspected by multiple groups, to include independent third-party inspectors, and the facility has consistently passed those inspections."

Appeals denied

Duran was one of nine people arrested during a protest outside the criminal justice center at 201 Poplar in early April.

Authorities initially charged him with disorderly conduct and obstructing a road or passageway. The local prosecutor's office quickly dropped the charges, but immigration authorities took Duran into custody, citing a deportation order from 2007.

That order had been entered in an Atlanta immigration court after Duran missed a court date. Duran's supporters have said he didn't get notice to appear that day.

The Atlanta immigration court declined to reopen Duran's case, and his supporters brought the case to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Virginia. That board likewise rejected Duran's appeal, leading to the current appeal to the 11th Circuit, which covers Atlanta.

More: For Manuel Duran and others in immigration court, stakes can be life and death

Coalition of news organizations weighs in

Court records show that a coalition of news organizations plans to file a brief of support in the case to the 11th Circuit. They are the American Society of News Editors, Associated Press Media Editors, Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the Media Law Resource Center, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, PEN America, Radio Television Digital News Association, Reporters without Borders and Society of Professional Journalists.

Several of these organizations had also filed a brief during Duran's earlier appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals. In that brief, they had made several arguments, including that conditions in El Salvador have worsened for reporters in recent years, escalating into killings.

The media organizations argued that ICE did not try very hard to find Duran after the Atlanta immigration judge ordered him deported: "... It apparently made no previous effort to pursue him, even though he is a prominent journalist who would have been easy to locate."

Supporters allege authorities targeted Duran for his reporting, which included subjects including alleged cooperation between Memphis authorities and ICE and the embarrassing case of a man whose body was overlooked for months in a Memphis police impound lot.

Duran's attorneys raised the retaliation question in a separate suit in Louisiana early this year.

Judges in Louisiana dismissed the retaliation claim, writing that the basis for Duran's custody was the old deportation order.

"ICE did not have (Duran) arrested and detained in retaliation for his statements in the press," wrote one of those judges, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph H.L. Perez-Montes.

"ICE had independent probable cause to arrest (Duran) that was unrelated to the MPD’s arrest of (Duran). (Duran) cannot show that, but for his critical reporting on immigration matters, he would not have been arrested and detained by ICE."

The judge also wrote that given the existing deportation order, it was irrelevant whether police had probable cause to arrest Duran.

Doing journalism in detention

Meanwhile, Duran said he's still collecting stories from other detainees, including one detainee whose son died while the father was in detention. He said he hopes to write a short book of those stories at some point.

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Reach reporter Daniel Connolly at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.