National Press Club to host briefing on effort to #KeepEmilioFree

Eduardo Beckett, the lead attorney for Emilio Gutiérrez-Soto, the National Press Club's 2017 Press Freedom award winner, will brief reporters on continuing legal threats to the Mexican reporter on Friday, October 12 at 9:30 a.m. in the Club's Zenger Room.

Read Gutiérrez's account, "A reporter detained: On life inside ICE camps," here.

Freed from eight months of detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following a lengthy legal challenge by U.S. and international press organizations, Gutiérrez and his son, Oscar, are now living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the veteran reporter has been welcomed as a member of this year's class of Knight-Wallace journalism fellows.

Unless the Board of Immigration Appeals intervenes, however, the two will be forced to return to El Paso for an Oct. 22 hearing on their asylum case — before the same judge who last year denied their asylum claim. Beckett is seeking a change of venue to Michigan; the Department of Homeland Security has filed a brief opposing the move.

Beckett will be available to discuss the case at 9:30 a.m. EST in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club.

This news conference is open to credentialed media and members of the National Press Club free of charge, however registration is required.