In Texas, the conflicts between immigration enforcement and public safety concerns is on display

What’s happening in Texas is part of a larger national debate about how local and state law enforcement policies can affect public safety. SB4 is the first state law seeking to penalize sanctuary cities, but many other similar pieces of legislation are moving through states around the country. On the other hand, the governor of Illinois signed […]

An immigration data workshop at Investigative Reporters and Editors

There are some 320 million people in the US. 43 million of them were born abroad. About 11 million people are undocumented and over 5.1 million children have one or more undocumented parent. 860,000 people have applied for temporary legal status because they were brought to the US without proper documentation as children. Over 500,000 […]

April 6 in Chicago: People-Centered Immigration Storytelling

I led a workshop at the Journalism and Women Symposium in Virginia in October that I think was supposed to be about technology. But the only tools anyone really needed was some scratch paper and a pen. What I’ve found in developing a social strategy for Public Radio International and for our immigration coverage, Global […]

The US has already tried registering Muslims. It didn’t work.

I reported on a Muslim registry in the US almost 15 years ago, after 9/11. It never occurred to me, once the Bush administration quietly stopped pursuing the program, that I would have an occasion to report on it again. But here we are. Since this story ran, the Obama administration has taken the National Security […]

‘Detained because my name was Gonzalez’

… Gonzalez and the two other protesters were in the booking area together, where they were processed, fingerprinted and patted down. That’s when, she says, two agents called her by name to come up to the counter. Gonzalez says she was the only one in the booking area who was called up. They began asking questions including, […]

Supreme Court hears immigration case — and starts with tough questions for lawyers

The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Legal Permanent Residents program, commonly known as DAPA, was scheduled to start in May 2015 and would have granted certain undocumented parents, like Bilbao, temporary relief from deportation and employment authorization. But the program was put on hold by a federal court. The case was argued April […]

At The Bunker, deported veterans recover from war — and look for a way back home

Not far from the southern limits of the US, and the very busy San Ysidro border crossing into Mexico, a small group of men, ages 30 to 70, have made a home. They have family in the US. They fought in the US military. Some were injured in battle. Some have PTSD. They have all […]