Author: Charlie Roth (Page 1 of 2)

“I’m very nervous about this.”

Omar is texting his immigration lawyer in August 2019.

He needs to get his immigration status – he is seeking asylum – so that he can get married. It’s a complex system to navigate, and he needs to hurry. But his lawyer says he can help him.

His lawyer explains that the process includes a fee: a $2000 non-refundable fee to start the case, and another $3000 if the case is approved.

Omar is having money troubles, but he is determined. He is borrowing money from his family and friends so that get through the process and do it correctly. He produces $1500 and his lawyer gives him extra time to get the remaining $500.

“Look, there are immigration centers that have higher rates,” his lawyer texts.

“I know,” Omar replies.

The process takes months, and his lawyer often takes days or weeks to respond to him. On November 30, 2019, Omar texts, “I wanted to know what you have done because you have not said anything to me again.” His lawyer reassures him that the process is still ongoing.

They make an appointment for December 17. On December 16, Omar texts, “Hi, can you confirm what time we will see each other tomorrow and where?”

No response.

Omar texts again on December 22. Then on December 24. And again on December 30, January 3, and January 13.

On January 14, Omar asks, “Hey what’s wrong you’re not answering me.”

The lawyer stops responding to Omar altogether. But the thing is, he isn’t texting a lawyer at all. This whole time, he’s been scammed.

Omar is one of thousands of victims of what the Federal Trade Commission calls “immigration services” scams. Between 2019 and 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) counted over 3,800 reports of such scams. In many cases, the scammer poses as a lawyer who can help the migrant navigate the complex immigration legal system in the U.S. They infiltrate migrants’ WhatsApps, promising to earn them citizenship – for an up-front fee. Then, they take the migrants’ money, often thousands of dollars, and run.

“People say they are pro bono. They make an appointment, they see your case, and then they ask for money,” Eliana, a Colombian immigrant who has seen her fellow migrants get scammed, explained. “People start to get suspicious when they haven’t received any other calls or follow ups. Then they realize that they’re not lawyers and they were just using you.”

Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz is the Pastor of the Good Shepherd Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and is a strong advocate and aid for undocumented migrants – especially in becoming U.S. citizens. He has seen many of these scams from the people he cares for, and says the scammers often get off scot-free.

“There’s no accountability because migrants have no means to sue,” he said. “They’ve either spent their last time paying these so-called lawyers, have no knowledge of the legal system and their right to sue, or are terrified to report it in fear of exposing their undocumented status.”

This paralyzing scenario leaves the migrants with even less money than they already had – and still no guide through the U.S. migration legal system.

Amelia Frank-Vitale, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton and an expert in US immigration and border policy, says that navigating the complex system without guidance is nearly impossible.

“There’s a lot of paperwork, and you have to file paperwork in a timely manner and in a very specific way,” she said. “The court can basically deny everything because you didn’t respond to a piece of mail. It’s a very involved process.”

“Arguing an asylum claim is very nuanced, and not having a real familiarity with U.S. law or international law, or the nuance of how the United States has interpreted asylum… it’s really difficult to win a case if you don’t have a very good attorney,” she explained.

Community organizations like the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) in Washington, D.C. hold programs to help migrants identify scams like immigration lawyer scams, according to program assistant George Taboada.

“That’s really important for newcomers who come to the United States, who are not only susceptible to that kind of disinformation, but also they’re coming to a new country with a different political environment,” Taboada said. “They’re very susceptible to new information, because they don’t really know much about the United States’s political culture.”

The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ) and the FTC announced in 2011 a national effort to combat these scams. In the first year of that continuing effort, the Department of Justice and other partners saw convictions of up to eight years in prison and the restitution of over $1.8 million – and that’s just on the federal level.

In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for example, authorities are still looking for two people who they believe scammed immigrants out of thousands of dollars while posing as immigration lawyers. They targeted individuals at the town’s United Blend Community Center, according to the Center’s director and founder Elizabeth Perez.

Perez told Fox56 that she trusted the two based on their seeming kindness and genuineness, but noticed that not much progress had been made on the cases they were supposingly working on.

“You have these families, they work so hard, some are working two jobs,” she told Fox56. “You have people that borrowed money and are paying five percent of interest on the loans and are still paying. They haven’t seen their family for years and you’re going to come and do this.”

Dozens of cases have been filed in the state of New York, where the Immigrant Assistance Service Enforcement Act is specifically designed to prevent and address these scams. The law, enacted in 2014, defines immigration services fraud in the first degree as the “intent to defraud another person seeking immigrant assistance services from such person… with intent to obtain property from such other person by false or fraudulent pretenses, representations or promises, and thereby wrongfully obtains such property with a value in excess of one thousand dollars.”

This law has stopped numerous scams, including the one that targeted Omar. Another scam was allegedly carried out by Windella Wells and the Adilah Dibba Corporation, who face a 44 count indictment, including eight counts of immigration assistance services fraud in the first degree. According to the Bronx County District Attorney’s office, Wells “defraud[ed] ten people out of $73,000 by promising to improve their immigration status.”

Stacey Richman, Wells’s attorney, says that discovery is still ongoing and that more details will come then.

“I don’t believe my client did anything wrong or believed she was doing anything wrong,” she said. “She didn’t do anything maliciously.”

All ten victims declined to comment.

Omar first texted Pablo Ortega Cuenca in December 2016.

“Are you a lawyer,” Omar asked Pablo.

“Yes,” Pablo replied.

“Oh it shows in your photo,” Omar realized.

But later, Pablo’s story changed.

Omar texted him, “I am an illegal immigrant and since you told me that you are a lawyer in the area, I wanted to know if I can go to a consultation with a yoke.”

“I work in the Spanish consulate,” Pablo responded.

“Ohh sorry”

“But I can help you,” Pablo claimed. “Because I also do extra cases.”

But Pablo took Omar’s money and ghosted him.

Pablo was arrested on January 10, 2024 on two counts of immigrant assistance services, two counts of 3rd degree grand larceny, and one count of scheme to defraud.

He pled guilty on June 12 to petit larceny and sentenced to time served.

These were all exceptional pieces – I suppose that’s what happens when assigned all Pulitzer Prize-winning articles – but the one I liked the most was Jennifer Senior’s Atlantic piece about a family’s grief after 9/11 (and not because of the Princeton connection, though I appreciated it). Not only was the McIlvaines’ story fascinating, but her writing was amazing. She had so many amazing one liners: “a scent once so powerful that New Yorkers could smell it in their eyes,” “she’d kept too much in, and she was fermenting in her own brine,” “It’s the damnedest thing: The dead abandon you; then, with the passage of time, you abandon the dead.” And that’s just to name a few.

It was such a fascinating protrayal of grief and its many forms – and how it affects life and marriage, and the paths that people take in life. The piece was long, but I flew through it. And I liked how she structured it too: telling the story, and then analyzing it from each member’s point of view. She gave the mountain metaphor and then went through how each family member saw the story and coped with the grief. It was fascinating and captivating, not to mention emotional. And I appreciate she ends with a quote – a small nod to an earlier comment (I’m sure this was intentional, and it does not go unnoticed).

The New York Times Magazine piece reminded me of a piece of advice that, ironically enough, came from a writer for the New York Times Magazine (Nicholas Confessore): don’t give your readers any off-ramps. And in my opinion, Engelhart gives multiple off-ramps – any time she goes on a tangent from the story about a medical study about dementia or a philosophical arguments about a fictional “Margo” (as fascinating as I found that section), I found it distracting. It gave me a place to leave the story – I was interested in the story, not necessarily the academics surrounding it. Perhaps that’s why I loved Senior’s piece so much: she never detracted from the story. Even the mountain metaphor was relevant, and it provided structure to the rest of the story. I didn’t feel the same for Engelhart.

Drost’s piece was similar to Senior’s in that she remained focused on the story, for the most part. I found that I didn’t mind when Drost took time apart from the story to give context on the Darien gap, because it’s important to understand. What did distract me, though, was I kept wondering how – how did she know all of this. She made the reader feel like she was traveling alongside the Cameroonians and Pakistanis the whole time. How did she know these details and these quotes without traveling with them? Get the photographs (which go uncredited until the end)? And if she was traveling with them, why wouldn’t she help them in their pain and struggles? I wouldn’t have minded inserting herself in the story as Senior did.

The Washington Post article(s) from Saslow were also great, but I found myself asking once again (and perhaps this is the journalist in me who is struggling to juggle multiple stories) : how? How could Saslow go so deep in these stories, from all over the country, and produce four in one year? Each of them emotional and intricately detailed – how?

Disclaimer: This is certainly not my final, and it will get better as I dig deeper – for example, I want to start with a scene, but I don’t have one yet – but here’s my best shot

When asylum seekers make the decision to make the journey to the United States, they often do so to flee some sort of trauma: organized crime, political violence, persecution based on some part of their identity. Then the journey itself is often treacherous and traumatic, full of dangers and people taking advantage of them – whether they knew of them beforehand or not. Once they get to the United States, some believe that the hardships are over. But even once they are initially processed, the trauma is far from over.

Immigration lawyer scams are as predatory as they are numerous. These scammers pose as lawyers that can help newly-arrived immigrants navigate the US’s complex immigration system. They take the money upfront – sometimes the little that the migrants have left – and disappear, never to be heard from again. And because of the migrants’ fear of the legal system and lack of understanding, the scammers often go unpunished.

Reading the Preston article post-election was really interesting. She provides a clear roadmap for what’s about to come – and how dangerous it could be. The article was everything I had heard about the two immigration stances rolled into one article. I think she summarized the two candidates’ policy positions really well – especially that Trump’s position and policies are based in racist and violent rhetoric.

For Harris: “curbing unauthorized border crossings and fixing the dysfunctional U.S. asylum system—a central driver of the growing disorder at the southern border over the past decade. She aims to build more secure and orderly channels for migrants to enter the country while also opening pathways for undocumented immigrants already settled in the United States to attain legal status”

For Trump: “Trump has promised to extend enforcement far into the interior, unleashing a nationwide blitz of punitive deportations to forcibly expel millions of immigrants. He also wants to limit new legal immigration”

She aptly uses Springfield as an example of Trump’s words having consequences and notes that he has said he will target those (legal) migrants first in his mass deportation plan. I also appreciated how she summarized his policy during his last presidential term and how those policies (especially Title 42) didn’t necessarily work as a deterrance. Promises left unfulfilled, leading to chaos.

Her section on the Biden and Harris administration border policy was also well written. She backs up her claim that “Despite the return of a semblance of order to the border, the political damage to Democrats was done” very well. This is especially for when she is discussing how the administration had to clean up what Trump left behind.

My biggest question for this piece concerns the format and placement. Preston writes it herself: immigration was one of, if not the most important topic for voters in the 2024 election. And perhaps this is making an assumption here, but I don’t think the average voter is reading Foreign Affairs – nor would read a long-form explanation and analysis like this. The attention span is limited – perhaps bullet points or a shorter analysis, with a longer explanation as an option. And it seems like the average Foreign Affairs reader would already be informed enough to have made a decision about immigration policy already. So who is this for?

In support of the roadmap that Preston laid out, Graham shows that now Trump has won the election, how is is planning to carry out his policies. To quote the headline, he is serious about the deportations. I appreciated how clearly Graham laid out the various people and roles (especially the sentence “If Miller is the architect of mass deportation, Homan will be the builder.”). It will be interesting to watch how closely this plan comes to reality, especially given how many laws would be broken and how devastating it would be to the economy should the plan be carried out. It certainly will be a story to watch – will he truly start in Springfield like he said? Will he truly deport all those millions of people? How will industries like agriculture be affected?

It’s no secret that I am interested in disinformation about migrants. I’ve spent the semester (and my thesis) working on political disinformation about migrants, writing pieces about how disinformation spread by politicians have hurt migrant and non-migrant communities in Springfield, Ohio and Charleroi, Pennsylvania. I’ve interviewed disinformation experts and people with firsthand experience, all to answer the questions: why does disinformation about migrants spread, and how does it affect them and their communities?

When interviewing them about “disinformation targeting migrants,” the subjects sometimes asked for a clarification: do I mean political disinformation spread by people like MAGA for political gain, or do I mean “for-profit” disinformation spread by scammers to trick migrants into paying them. I always clarified I meant the former, but those questions made me curious… what is the world of migrant scammers like? Who are these scammers? What do the scams look like? How are they spread? Why aren’t the scammers being held accountable?

In my few conversations about these scams, what I’ve heard is extremely disheartening. People posing to be much-needed pro-bono asylum lawyers ask for money upfront after “taking their case,” and disappear never to be heard from the migrants again. And the migrants don’t have the means to hold these so-called lawyers accountable because they either don’t have the money, don’t understand the legal system, are afraid of getting in trouble with the immigration system, or a combination of these factors. And so, many times these scammers get away with it.

There hasn’t been much news coverage about this. CBS News New York covered it in a brief article when DA Alvin Bragg discussed it after indicted one scammer back in January. More scams have been investigated in other states like Colorado. But from my few conversations about this, the problem is much more widespread.

Ideally, I would speak to migrants who were scammed about their experience with scammers. I would also speak to advocates like Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz and CARECEN in D.C. who help migrants navigate their arrival and avoid scams. But most of all, I would love to actually meet the scammers – to see them in action. Perhaps the dream scenario for me (as someone who is not Hispanic and doesn’t speak Spanish) is to have a migrant secretly record meeting a scammer to hear their tactics. New York is a one-party consent state – I assume this would be legal? I’d love to interview one (maybe some actually convicted), but I don’t know how possible that is. Perhaps I can take a page out of Taub’s book and use transcripts from indictments involving scammers?

Scams targeting migrants is an important issue, a story of people taking advantage of those with little to no power to fight back. And if they can’t turn to authorities to take care of this, then it is up to journalists to help them fight back – to correct this injustice and address the corruption.

Alternatively, another story idea I have is to answer why more Hispanic voters voted for Trump in 2024 than they ever have. But that question was somewhat easily answered by various people we talked to in New York, so maybe not the best story idea.

What I love most about long-form pieces is they often have the best details. Maybe it’s the space that long-form provides, or maybe it’s the people that write long-form vs. short-form. But they make the stories so much better. It really shows the importance of the journalist being there, immersed in the story – that just makes it better.

In the Dancing for their Lives piece, there are so many great details. The scene with the women getting ready in the bathroom is great – familiar to anyone who has seen any teen movie (and, I presume, many women have experienced this image themselves). And, when detailing the dance floor, calling the women “merchandise” in the eyes of men is very poignant – it exacts a particular image. And the images of the women on the dance floor were also very illustrative, especially the woman with the cigarette:

“She appeared to be listening to music from some distant time inside her head; eyes closed, she mouthed the lyrics of traditional laments of loss. With each refrain, her eyes moistened and she took the cigarette she was holding and brought the burning tip close to the exposed skin above her breasts. Over and over she brought the smoldering tobacco near her naked skin, about to inflict pain, but stopping short of contact.”

This is such a beautiful description; I can close my eyes and see her in the red dress with her cigarette. I can watch her movements because they are described with such detail. Though I wonder how much of her emotional description is real or interpretation… gee I wish I could ask the author.

I thought the article on Halabi was really well written, but I am curious about some of the choices. For example, the choice to not include the fact that Halabi never spoke to Taub and that most of his quotes are from the interview with the asylum officer until mid-way through the article was interesting. I noted that he kept saying “Halabi said later” which was interesting, specific phrasing, and then he revealed later why he phrased it that way. Also interesting is starting out with Brunner – it is perhaps a little disorienting, but I did appreciate Taub making the parallels between Brunner and Halabi clearer throughout the piece (especially ending with the comparison). But I do like building Halabi’s life, movements, and mysteries by piecing together the puzzle: talking to people like Tayara or reviewing the asylum interview transcripts or going over the CIJA investigation.

I also found the article about Sayyid the garbageman fascinating.  It is really cool to read about people we wouldn’t normally hear from, and hearing how the system works in a foreign country like Egypt. As Hessler alluded, the reader does learn a lot from following Sayyid around the streets and fire escapes of Cairo. The pills example was particularly striking (though perhaps it’s because it comes up again later in the article). The fight between Sayyid and his wife, too, was illustrative – with the different “weapons” (money and words).

I do wonder about the first-person nature of these articles. I’ve been trained as a journalist to keep myself out of the story – I am not the story, the characters (or subjects) are – but both the dance club and Sayyid had the author at least a secondary part of a larger story.  It was almost as if they are a character themselves. The audience was keenly aware they were looking through the writer’s eyes. What is the reasoning for this?

This week’s readings and videos were quote inspiring to me. We watched and read about a phenomenon that I had heard much about, but didn’t fully have a grasp of. I had heard of the wars in Ukraine and Syria having a larger online presence than previous wars, but I suppose I didn’t the full extent of it – nor helpful it could be to investigators (both journalists and official administrative bodies) in holding perpetrators to account.

The documentary about Bellingcat was especially illuminating. I knew basically what the organization was and that they used open-source intelligence to investigate things like the downing of MH17, but I didn’t fully understand how they did it, nor how instrumental social media videos and google maps is. I really enjoyed watching the process of geolocating the tank and jeep caravan with the gas station – it felt like a great demonstration of what they do and how they do it. The same goes for The Listening Post video – I was really inspired learning about how the Xinjiang story first came out, and it reminds me that I have resources like that as a student to find stories that impactful and world-changing.

The Time article about Ukraine “crowdsourcing” intelligence reminded me a bit of how Bellingcat works, but instead of for journalism, it’s for intelligence and warning the Ukrainian people. I think that’s a really smart way of fighting a war in the modern era, and I wonder if we’re going to see more tactics like that in future wars as people get a better grasp of technology and artificial intelligence. To me, it was a more hopeful version of the podcast, where they used technology to find and identify people in mass graves and what happened to them. Instead, it was the Ukrainian government warning and collecting evidence of Russia’s actions, like Bellingcat does.

The Foreign Affairs, Forbes, and NPR articles all concern the difficulty of trying Russian crimes in a court like the ICC, and it makes the situation seem almost hopeless. But putting those with the journalism discussed above, there is some hope that open-source and crowdsourced evidence can help bring some accountability in the future for the war crimes, especially because the footage and evidence is being investigated and, perhaps more importantly, preserved. I suppose time will tell if any of the work makes a difference in terms of legal accountability, but it certainly helps in getting the stories out into the world.

Kristin Hopkins-Calcek knew that when former President Trump mentioned the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, her town could be the next one in his sights.

The comment came during Trump’s September 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, in which Trump falsely claimed that Haitian migrants there were “eating the pets of the people that live there.” Hopkins-Calcek, the borough-council president of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, said that as the town’s leadership watched the ensuing events in Springfield unfold, they began preparing, in case something did happen.

“I was worried it was coming, because I knew the people that would you know would reference Charleroi in order to add to the narrative about immigrants being such a negative in this country,” she said.

Then it happened: on September 12, in a rally in Tucson, Arizona, Trump used Charleroi as another example of what he and his base believe is a “migrant invasion” in the United States.

“What a beautiful name, but it’s not so beautiful now,” he said about Charleroi. “It has experienced a 2,000 percent increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris. So, Pennsylvania, remember this when you go to vote. This is a small town, and all of a sudden they got thousands of people … The town is virtually bankrupt. This flood of illegal aliens is bringing massive crime to the town and every place near it.”

“I wasn’t completely surprised,” Hopkins-Calcek remembered. “We were fearful that it was going to come to Charleroi because we knew we had a similar situation [to Springfield]. But it’s incredulous, right? You don’t think that it will, until it does.” 

Trump used Charleroi as an example in multiple rallies since. Hopkins-Calcek says that none of it is true.

“We haven’t had any violence. In fact, our crime is down,” she said. “Our statistics are looking great here in town. Our economy is better. We have businesses that are opening.”

The comments – lies – about migrants in the United States have been a focal point of all of Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, as well as other “MAGA” politicians, from eating pets in Springfield to gang violence in Aurora, Colorado. This weekend at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Trump’s senior advisor for policy Stephen Miller told the crowd that “America is for Americans and Americans only” – echoing Adolf Hitler’s 1934 cry to the German people that “Germany is for Germans and Germans only.”

Trump himself repeated previous claims of a “migrant invasion,” saying, “the United States is now an occupied country” and that Vice President Kamala Harris “has resettled [immigrants] into your communities to prey upon innocent American citizens.”

Professor Jacob Shapiro, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, says that politicians like Trump know better than to spread lies about migrants, but it’s all for “political purposes.”

“It’s lying for political gain,” he explained. “He takes nuggets of truth to make exaggerated points.”

As for Trump’s supposed plan to deport all migrants, illegal and legal, Shapiro says it’s all part of the scheme.

“It’s a fantasy plan to stave off unfavorable realities,” Shapiro said, alluding to sociologist Lee Clarke’s book “Mission Improbable.” “It’s unrealistic, but it sounds good to his people.”

Hopkins-Calcek has a theory about why her town was targeted by Trump.

“​​There are some people who have ties to the Republican Party that are in this area, and I’m sure that’s how the word of this got out,” she said. “And unfortunately, there are no guard rails, right? So in this day and age, it just doesn’t matter who’s hurt by things. If it gets votes or sows division, then it’s allowable and supported by Trump and the Republican Party.”

“His entire campaign has been about fear mongering and division and misinformation. So [Charleroi] was another tool,” she continued. “We’re not happy that our town is being used, not only for political gain through the immigration discussion, but also through the job loss discussion.”

Trump’s lies have been harmful to the migrants and their advocates. Hopkins-Calcek says that the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups have distributed flyers in town. She says that the town has liaisons with the different migrant communities, and that the liaison for the Haitian community “has let them know that it’s probably best if they keep it more low key.”

“There’s an undercurrent of fear,” she said. “[White supremacist groups] have been given a pass, you know, because of the comments that were made to show their ugliness.” 

Her comments echo previous comments from Pastor Carl Ruby, an advocate for Haitian migrants in Springfield previously, who previously described the situation in Springfield: “I think there were a total of somewhere between 30 and 50 bomb threats. Schools canceled, hospitals closed, grocery stores closed. … Everyone was nervous. People are afraid. My family is very afraid. Some people have been afraid to come to church because of the publicity that I have had as a spokesman for the Haitians.”

The migrants arrived in Charleroi – legally – and took jobs that weren’t being taken. They came from all over, from Haiti to Liberia. Now, Hopkins-Calcek says, they’ve become a “wonderful” part of the Charleroi community.

“​​We’ve been working to slowly integrate their culture into ours, and we had a very successful year in that we’ve incorporated their culture and music into our thorough events throughout the last not only the last year, but the last few years,” she explained. “I have never in my entire life met a group of people that are so kind, nice, loving, happy and want to belong. Want to follow the rules of law. Want to follow the culture. Want to change their culture, to fit in.”

Despite all of the hate that has been directed at her community, Hopkins-Calcek also has hope for a peaceful future for Charleroi.

“We’re way behind the rest of the country as far as being tolerant of things and people that don’t look like ourselves,” she said. “Just because we’re behind doesn’t mean we’re not going to get there. We’re just hopeful that, moving forward, we can all live in peace.”

The first thing I noticed when New Yorker piece (which I read last) was the word bodies. Four bodies. Six bodies. Ten bodies. It seems like such an inhumane way of describing people. People who have stories and emotions, many of whom, nowadays, have experienced immense trauma. Who are escaping inhumane treatment. Who have been sexually assaulted in the Darién Gap . Who are from Mexico to Honduras to Venezuela, fleeing persecution and targeted (or even un-targeted violence). The people who Blitzer writes about in “Everyone Who is Gone is Here.”

I really appreciated reading the Atlantic article, especially because I love Caitlin Dickerson. It was interesting to read this in the context of her piece “‘We Need to Take Away Children.'” It seemed like almost a prequel to that piece – with the traumas that asylum seekers faced when entering the U.S. (among them, family separation), they faced so many on their way there. I was also struck by the actions of the guides: videoing early on; it’s almost like a disinformation campaign, selling their journey as enjoyable and not telling the hardships and abuse. They don’t show them after sexual assaults and traumas. They don’t show hell. And the fact that Caitlin and her team actually went and traveled through the Darién Gap with their subjects is such great reporting. I hope to have an experience like theirs someday (maybe not as dangerous for my mother’s sake).

Reading this in context of the American government’s various policies regarding immigration and the southern border makes the situation seem all the more hopeless. These people need our help, and I believe we are morally obligated – our “moral imperative” – to provide them that aid. Putting the New Yorker article alongside the New York Times review of “Everyone Who is Gone is Here” truly shows, as the New York Times puts it, “the American immigration system as a victim of its own dysfunction.” And this dysfunction is harming real people who have already gone through such trauma and pain to get here, a land they see as an escape from hardships.

P.S. In another edition of this class, I highly recommend assigning “‘We Need to Take Away Children'” – it is hauntingly well-written (it won the Pulitzer, of course).

I remember when the U.S. armed forces left Afghanistan and watching the truly unbelievable scenes of people clinging onto an airplane, trying to escape. It seemed like a terrifying end to a terrifying conflict, with a terrifying aftermath as well. What was missing in the immediate aftermath news coverage, I thought, was the human aspect, while most American news outlets focused on the American angle. I remember a few stories of Afghans who helped the American military struggling to get out of the country and fearing the wrath of the Taliban. Those stories faded from view and I, like many Americans, moved on to other stories.

This week’s stories are what I was looking for. While the PBS NewsHour piece was nice context, for the most part, reading Khan’s two-article series was incredibly eye-opening. It was what I thought was happening, confirmed. My favorite stories combine public records and on-the-ground reporting, and that’s exactly what this was. I’m honestly about surprised Khan was able to get the Pentagon records, and I’m glad she supported it with in-person reporting. I think Khan summarized the first article very succinctly in the second article: the documents showed “not a series of tragic errors but a pattern of impunity.” And then the stories of the survivors only add to that claim of a “pattern of impunity.” It is a great example of combining records and on-the-ground reporting to get a complete picture and tell an otherwise untold, important, story of American military failure.

I also appreciated the podcast from The Breakfast Sisters and hearing from the migrants themselves, these being resilient women who were artists and journalists – defiant in the face of the Taliban and forced to flee when the Americans left Afghanistan. It was also nice to her about Restore Her Voice  and the women that they helped. I also enjoyed reading the PBS article about the refugees in St. Louis, and how they’ve adapted. The Migration Policy article was interesting too, but I feel like the data can only go so far – there were no interviews! Which I suppose isn’t their goal; they’re not a news organization. Perhaps combining the Migration Policy and PBS articles would have satisfied me more: reading the data, and then hearing from the people that comprise the data (though St. Louis was not one of the places that was on the top destinations map, but no matter).