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.

The articles chosen for this week were tremendous – each one demonstrated what journalism has the capacity to be. Powerful and affecting, these were great examples of embedding. I’m struck by the quality and quantity of reporting that went into these, not just in terms of how they got the support to engage in such long projects, but also in the organization of information. Taub had papers sprawled out on his floor… how do you go from that to a tight article? Topically, I felt like these stories all showed underrepresented voices. In yours, Deb, I was most impressed by the final detail that Um Nour was facilitating sex-work; to survive means to take advantage of your social position at every rung of the ladder. Victims of economic violence perpetrate violence against others, unfortunately usually those lower in the ladder than them. This is a side of migration, and of everyday living, that normally is overlooked. Each story felt like it unraveled dominant narratives to show underlying ones: from fake chinese threats to the relationship between the BVT and Halabi, the real events are always shrouded in other narrative constructions. Particularly after this election, I think we need to key into the narratives that are created by institutions of power. The American voters were against Biden’s migration policy and “his” economy because they were led to feel that way. Narrative journalism can be weaponized by the state (Austria), or by individuals (Wang). Regardless, there seems to be an obligation to criticize and question the things we hear. We interact with narratives all day, and live our lives accordingly; knowing which ones to look into is difficult, and sniffing out those fake narratives feels essential to good journalistic work. 

Now, methods-talk again. I’m really attracted to embed-style journalism because of the wealth of details that comes out: that Sayyid takes away his empties because he’d be the one picking them up later, that one of the women on stage cried while dragging on her cigarette, that Pircher is called “rumpelstiltskin” behind his back, these details are what make a story great, and they show me that the reporter has done their due diligence. At the same time, I’m abundantly aware of the challenges embedding creates. Langfitt’s work is amazing, but I don’t think it could be done anymore. I talked about Langfitt with a friend who laments the impossibility of foreign-correspondance in China, and he joked that if you tried the “free Taxi,” bit now, your second or third passenger would be a CCP officer. Embedding is reliant on access. Taub bypasses this by using documents and investigates by moving around the subject, but even here he somehow has access (which to be clear, I don’t understand… how does he get all these internal documents!? How does he get top-secret BVT memos?). Embedding is a great tool, but there needs to be an open door to go through – how do you open that door? This “access,” question creates further challenges – Hessler is a foreigner, and so why Sayyid trusts him is slightly unclear… at a certain point, it’s to get something. Embedded reporting straddles a line wherein subjects become friends or collaborators. There’s some mutual exchange. As shown in the Langfitt article, this can have serious consequences. How do you make sure the information you’re getting is positive, reliable, etc? Hessler’s interaction with Wahiba shows another big problem in embedded journalism or immersive journalism. A lot depends on the social standing of the journalist themselves, or their identity! A foreign man could never see Wahbia and talk to her for a story, but there’s probably a good story to her life and to her. Without her perspective, a lot is lost in my opinion. Someone else could write a story with access to her. Just not Hessler. And to navel-gaze for a moment, I couldn’t write it either! Given my position and identity, more doors for immersive reporting are open to me than most. I’m abundantly aware of that privilege there. But at the same time, thinking specifically about trying to talk with Afghan women for my final paper, my position will create challenges. These articles also present an alternate to our norm, wherein the reporter is themselves the migrant, rather than the other way around. There is the challenge of possible misunderstandings – I guess the solution is to immerse so deeply that you don’t feel like an outsider any more, but getting that far feels difficult. Lots of words, lots of thoughts. Each of these articles was a novella unto themselves, so I feel like I could (and should) say more, but generally just impressed and motivated by these readings.

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?

Pitch:

Exploring the Role of Migration Influencers and Social Media in Advocacy and Public Awareness

I am looking to write my final project on migration influencers and nonprofit organizations that utilize social media platforms to project their journeys migrating to the United States, as well as legal resources and helpful information for migrants. In addition to the benefit of these social platforms, I am looking at how they might propose ethical and misinformation issues. This topic is important because we live in a time where a significant amount of information comes from social media platforms. Given that this has become such a huge part of when and how we consume news and content, the role social media platforms present to immigrants and those who attempt to migrate to the United States is significant. Some questions I hope to answer include: How are these platforms being used? What benefits do they propose? Do they present misinformation or not? How are they effective? How are they not effective?

I have already reached a long list of migration influencers and nonprofit groups with a large social media following. Below are the interviews I have been able to set up and the organizations and people I am waiting to hear a response from. I also have a series of professors who have combined their work with social media that I am interested in emailing. However, I am waiting to see if I hear back from the people I already emailed and messaged directly.

People/Organizations I already have a interview set-up with: 

Sayu Bhojwani- Political activist, author, and advocate for her work in immigrant rights and leadership development.

Juan Escalante- Activist and writer sharing his experiences as an undocumented immigrant. Digital creator platform with 6k followers on Instagram.

Manuel  Monterrosa- Migration influencers who was interviewed by the New York Times on his TikTok and Instagram account documenting his experience. He is also an activist and advocate for immigrant rights with 39k followers on Instagram.

Miss Sara Mora- Immigrant rights activist with 236k followers on Instagram.

Afia Yunus- Award-Winning U.S. Immigration Attorney with 75.3k followers on Instagram.

People/Organizations I have messaged and am waiting on a response from: 

Immigrant Legal Resource Center-  24.7k followers on Instagram.

Angela Vazquez- Immigration service lawyer with 169k followers on Instagram.

National Immigration Law Center- 24.8 k followers on Instagram.

Carlos Eduardo Espina- Immigrant Rights Activist & law student with 958k followers on Instagram.

Gaby Pacheco- Immigrant rights advocate with 3k followers on Instagram.

UN Migration- International Organization for Migration with 309k followers on Instagram.

Kofi Kinaata- Goodwill Ambassador for UN Migration with 2.8 million followers on Instagram.

Paul Choy- Goodwill Ambassador for UN Migration with 17.6k followers on Instagram.

Latino Community Foundation- 27k Followers on Instagram.

Neema Maicel- Immigration Lawyer located in Canada with 10.1k followers on Instagram.

Immigrant Justice Network- 3k followers on Instagram.

Ankush Malik- Immigrant from Northern India with 67.4k followers on Instagram.

Make the Road New York- Organization that advocates for immigrant, black, and brown communities with 25.9k followers on Instagram.

Kathleen Martinez- Immigration Attorney with 700k followers on Instagram.

Reyna Grande- Writer and immigration advocate with 9k followers on Instagram.

Paola Mendoza- Writer and immigration advocate with 85.7k followers on Instagram.

Denea- Previously undocumented immigrant that hosts a podcast.

Sily Shah- Author of Unbuild Walls . 

Zahra Billoo- Civil rights lawyer with 11.3k followers on Instagram.

Alejandra Campoverdi- Advocate and National Bestselling author with 25.6k followers on Instagram.

Julissa Natzely Arce Raya- Activist, Writer, and Producer with 59.6k followers on Instagram.

Dancing for Their Lives had a hook that really painted the scene as to who, what, and where we should be focusing on. I also found that the title immediately grabbed my attention. Why are they dancing for their lives? How could that be? etc., were questions that circulated in my mind upon reading the title. It also embedded a significant meeting in something we often don’t even think twice about dancing. Despite us finding out later what the real significance of the “dancing” means, the prompt of suggesting that dancing could save the lives of these people is something that makes us think.

The paragraph that captured the women lined up in the ladies’ room and applying eyeliner together completely tugged at my heart strings. Again, an image or idea we have used before or know from experience used in an entirely different context with significantly greater meaning makes it much more shocking to read. Something you do with your girlfriends for fun or at a sleepover (applying makeup) for this woman is a matter of survival. It’s a juxtaposition that conveys the severity of the situation. The line, “They were preparing to live off their bodies,” is such a jaw-dropping summary and line for this paragraph of information. That is precisely what they are doing, and they recognize it themselves.

“Women accused of prostitution were rounded up and publicly beheaded in Baghdad and other cities. The executioners carried out their work with swords. The severed heads of the condemned women left on the doorsteps of their homes.” This part of the text left me jaw-dropped. The hypocritical nature of this system was absurd to read. For these women to go into prostitution to survive only then become beheaded because of the system that deemed it condemnable seemed absurd. How is one to live? It also makes me wonder if the woman depicted in the lead feared having her identity released. 2000 and 2001 are not all too long ago. It makes me question what risks women engaging in prostitution during modern-day time are subjected to.

The article, Tales of the Trash, did a great job of capturing just how unstable Egypt is. Especially the line that read, “Since we moved into the apartment, the country has cycled through three constitutions, three Presidents, four Prime Ministers, and more than seven hundred members of parliament.” To compare the idea that the United States has had the same constitution during our lifetimes and has a standard presidential term of four years and the idea of having had three constitutions in the time of moving into a new apartment stresses the ridiculousness of the situation. I found the part of the article that detailed the lives of the people whose trash Sayyid collected incredibly interesting. The work until that point to paint the scene and build up to the eventual discussion of others’ trash and what it means was successful. For so many of these disastrous situations depicted in the text, their recentness was incredibly shocking to m. Especially the idea of the swine flu epidemic. To be slaughtering 300,000 pigs and throwing organic waste in the streets in 2011 is crazy to think that in reality that was only really 13 years ago.

I also found the quote emphasizing the relationship between “women and garbage” super strange. Many of the key ideas and themes embedded throughout this piece were unconventional and seemed odd in one way or another, adding a level of depth. “He explained that by law, Wahiba needed her husband’s permission to work.”  To think that so many of these ideas are recent and aren’t from that long ago is one of the most concerning aspects of this text. To have only been posted in 2014 and to talk about these legal laws and regulations that restrict women in such ways makes me think about how so many different parts of the world are living in entirely different world that are no where near as progressive as the United States.

In the New Yorker piece, A Spy in Flight, I found the idea of lineage and the emphasis on preparing youth for positions interesting. In the text, this is emphasized when it reads, “But, in the late nineties, as Assad’s health was failing, he became devoted to the task of preparing his ruthless world for his son.” This reminded me of the other piece, Tales of the Trash, and how fathers would prep their daughters for marriage. There is a specific emphasis placed on tradition in these cultures that distracts from the idea that progression and change are less probable in tradition.  Not only that, but the idea of progression and change is discouraged and suppressed given those in power want to stay in power.

Another piece of this article that reminded me of my discussion with two  immigrants I talked to on Friday in New York City, along with my profile subject, is the idea of a controlling government and the threat they pose to individuals. When the text elaborated on this in Syria, it reminded me extensively of what I’ve learned from others when talking about their own experiences with their home countries and governments. “They jailed activists who spoke to foreign news outlets and targeted for arrested people whose phones contained songs that were “rather offensive to Mr. President.” This reminded me of how my profile subject would talk about the Cuban government and speak about not being able to say anything, given that it would be used against them. They would instead suggest that they were saying something offensive to the Cuban government. Individuals would be at risk for imprisonment, similar to the Syrian government. Not only that, but the idea of political persecution and threats was also something that the immigrant couple that I talked to in New York emphasized as the reason why they had to leave. They couldn’t go back to Columbia, given gangs of people were after them, and they faced political persecution. I feel as though at this point of the semester I can connect a lot of ideas to conversations and articles I’ve read, painting a clearer picture of the larger issues at hand in not just one country or situation, but in most.

I found that the chapter assigned from After the Last Boarder also provided a significant amount of historical information that really helped paint a clearer perspective of the time period outlined and U.S. refugee resettlement. Outlining laws, pacts, relationships, and historical time periods added to my overall understanding of how these things have come to be and what they mean on a broader scale.

All of the articles this week really made me think deeply about the current state of the world and my thoughts revolving around the election. I found that every article conjured some level of emotion and really made me think critically about the situations and discussions prompted.

“In the first Taliban era, I can say that psychologically, all women died. They were alive only physically,” said Nasiba Maqsudi from her home in northeast Philadelphia. “I was one of those women.”

Nasiba was a doctor in Kabul, Afghanistan, when the United States pulled its support from the country. Her husband, Muhammed Khan Maqsudi, had worked for the UN, and with its support, the two fled with their son to Pakistan in October of 2021.

After two years of waiting with a pending asylum-application, the family was able to move to the US in July of 2024. Nasiba said that she goes out as often as possible, trying to improve her English-language abilities and learn about American culture.

Now in the US, she is grateful despite difficulties, and wants to use her position of power to support those she left behind. “As far as myself, I’m not going to Afghanistan anymore,” Nasiba said. “I hope I will be able to help out women from here.” 

Nasiba Maqsudi was born in 1989, in the Ghazni province to the Southeast of Kabul. She’s ethnically Hazara and a Shiite muslim, two historically targeted minority groups in Afghanistan. 

In the 1990s, the Sunni Taliban government oppressed and committed mass violence against the Hazaras, who are of South Asian descent. By 2001, violence against Hazaras was mounting in Central Afghanistan and was receiving international attention.

Nasiba and Muhammed, who’s also a Shiite Hazara from the Ghazni province, remember the repression brought on by the Taliban. “The people of Afghanistan were totally hopeless,” he said. He remembers the Taliban cutting off access to food and medical supplies. 

During this time, Nasiba saw countless women sick, without access to proper medical care. “I witnessed myself losing four siblings that my mother lost during the pregnancies,” she said. 

“When the US came to Afghanistan in 2001, the situation totally changed,” remembered Muhammed. “We exercised peace, security, dignity. We became very very happy.” 

“When the Americans came to Afghanistan, I feeled I was born again,” Nasiba said. “It was so wonderful for me, I never will forget that time.” With new freedom for education and enfranchisement, Nasiba returned to her memories of the Hazara repression. “When I was looking at the women suffering from different diseases and problems, my plan was one day to be able to start treating these poor people and poor communities without any payment,” she said. She enrolled in Kateb University in Kabul, to study medicine. 

After graduating in 2019, she started working at the renowned Istiqlal hospital in Kabul. “I had the plan to build my own clinic, and I was working on the building,” she remembers. “But unfortunately, it didn’t happen.”

In 2021, when the Taliban took control of Kabul, Nasiba remembered feeling as depressed as she had when the Taliban was first in power. “I lost hope. I was only thinking about my husband and my children and there was no ambition,” she said. Since 2001, protections for women, Shiites, and Hazaras had increased, and 2021 brought with it aggression against all three groups.

In October of 2021, the UN helped Nasiba, Muhammed, and their then-thirteen-year-old son flee to Pakistan. Nasiba remembers her time in Pakistan anxiously, saying that she was so worried they’d deport her back to Afghanistan that she never left the house. Muhammed submitted a P1 asylum claim with the UN’s support, and the family was finally accepted in June of 2024. 

After a month in Qatar where they were interviewed and further background checked, Nasiba and her family flew to Philadelphia. There, they were connected with the Nationalities Service Center (NSC), who helped them with medicaid, food stamps, and housing. 

After three months, NCS connected the family with their Matching Grant program, an effort to connect immigrants and refugees with suitable jobs in their fields. “They couldn’t find a job for us,” Muhammed said. 

Nasiba and Muhammed are not alone in their job-search difficulties. According to a study by the Immigration Policy Institute, only 61% of Afghan immigrants were employed in 2022. Facing ill-equipped job training programs and difficulties with English, many educated Afghans refugees are either jobless, or employed at menial positions. 

The job-search difficulties among Afghan evacuees are worse for women, complicated by many factors. According to the Immigration Policy Institute’s study, only 37% of Afghan women were in the American labor force in 2022, compared to 57% of all foreign-born women. 

Dr. Abha Rai at Loyola University and Dr. Mary Held at the University of Knoxville argue that economic pressures in the US put strain on traditional Afghan gender dynamics.

They see cultural differences as central to the general difficulties in integrating. “In the US, because of how expensive things are, sometimes men and women both have to work,” said Rai. “Maybe they didn’t do it like that back in Afghanistan.”

“Coming into the United States, Afghan women have gained freedoms,” adds Held. “But also by working, and through these freedoms, have gained power and agency in the household.”

Rai and Held admit that the job-finding process has been less-than-perfect for Afghan refugees. “Coming from that structure, males had greater agency and greater power in the home, so just by women gaining power, it can shift men’s sense of power,” said Held. “The difference in the responsibilities, respect, and power between Afghanistan and the United States,” she continued, “can lead to interpersonal conflict and stress within the family.

The Maqsudi are relative outliers in this trend – Nasiba worked the last ten years, and Muhammed moved to Kabul full time when she began school at Kateb University. But still, they haven’t been exempt from culture shock.

“Since we came here,” said Nasiba. “I realized that I used to live in a very traditional country. So slowly I realize that men and women have the same rights here in the US.”

“Women can go and find jobs and go out and walk the same as men are doing. This is something very promising for me,” she continued. Still, she acknowledges that NCS and Matching Grant have failed to place her with a job that uses her experience and education.

“We failed Afghans, we continue to fail Afghans,” said Shayan Davoudi, immigration lawyer at the HIAS refugee resettlement organization. Since 2021, he has worked on the asylum cases of over 100 Afghans, and said he consistently sees them being passed over for job opportunities, without viable paths towards career success. 

“Think about a young Afghan who couldn’t continue his education back in Afghanistan. Could that person realistically in this country continue education? Obviously the answer is no,” explained Davoudi. “An American citizen in this country post high school, you either got to have money, or get admitted to a school that can get you some scholarship.” And without green cards, he explained, Afghans have few opportunities for scholarships. 

“The majority of my clients, they were educated people, they had their whole dreams,” he said. Here, he continued, “they have to start from zero.”

Nasiba remains optimistic, despite lack of help from job-agencies.  

“I hope that here I can change my life by pursuing my education, and hopefully by becoming a doctor,” she said. While as a P1-visa holder, she can enroll in medical school, the economic challenges create mounting difficulties. 

She said that regardless of her circumstances here, they are incomparable to the challenges that Afghan women are facing. She keeps in contact with her sisters, parents, and friends, all of whom have stayed in Afghanistan. “Part of our heart is allocated to the country and the place that we’re from,” she said. 

Just as she’d first hoped to open a free clinic in Afghanistan, she now wants to help others with her medical abilities.  

“I hope that one day I’ll be able to do something here and through here I can help many women in Afghanistan,” she said. Before that, she’s looking for a job that will help her stand on her own two feet.

Over the phone, seventy-eight-year-old Jorge Sáez Rodríguez describes himself as a self-proclaimed grateful guy who is still full of life. He speaks of recently discovering the alcoholic beverage Fireball and his love for America. Granddaughter Paola Rodríguez describes him as “a great guy, kind of a yapper, and socially outgoing.” Not only that, but he is also a “Jokester who loves to drink his Whiskey.” The son of a Cuban doctor, Jorge Sáez Rodríguez, migrated to the U.S. at sixteen, 62 years ago. “You’d live in fear every day,” he says of his time in Cuba. Despite his love of the country and the people there, he speaks of his fear of persecution by government officials and a lack of opportunities. 

Not only was persecution a fear for Rodríguez but also what would happen to his family. “You couldn’t talk to anyone because your parents were always at risk,” he says. “If what you said went against the government’s ideals, your parents would be imprisoned.” As a child, government control was a massive issue for Rodríguez, especially after Fidel Castro came to power. A Cuban revolutionary who established a communist government in Cuba, Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s regime in 1959.

Attending Catholic school in Cuba, Rodríguez remembers one Catholic priest deliberately telling people to leave after Castro gained authority. After the Catholic school Rodríguez attended was closed, he attended public school, where he spoke of restrictions placed on students and limitations on what they could or couldn’t do. “When I went to school, I wasn’t happy. They were trying to pressure me to do things I didn’t want to do,” he says. “You couldn’t talk to anyone because they were going to say that you were against Cuba.” Rodríguez was pressured to cut sugar cane, pick cotton in fields, and complete additional assignments for the government while attending public school.

Eventually, in 1962, he decided to migrate to the United States. Rodríguez’s family was waiting for him in Miami at the time. He describes the migration process as pretty straightforward for him. “You went to the embassy of the United States and asked for a Visa,” he explains. “In six months, you could be out of Cuba.” Despite having to wait for a telegram to confirm the status of his Visa, he didn’t face any extreme difficulties.

It was only a short time before Rodríguez arrived in Miami and then moved to New Orleans, where he attended high school. Although Rodríguez didn’t live in Miami for long, he describes it as a place that felt safe and welcoming upon coming to the United States. “I went to Miami, and they found me a home,” he says. Later in life, Rodríguez moved to Puerto Rico, where he took a position working at a water treatment facility and would start a family. “I admire the Puerto Rican people,” he explains. “They are floating between Latin America and the U.S.; they believe in democracy and are very friendly.”

Rodríguez migrated before the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966. William LeoGrande, former dean of the American University School of Public Affairs and expert on Latin American politics, explains that “anyone coming from a communist country was regarded as a political refugee and was allowed into the United States in the early 1960s.” LeoGrande says that it wasn’t until the Cuban Adjustment Act legalized the status of those people that Cuban migrants could apply as permanent residents and seek citizenship in the United States. 

LeoGrande speaks on Carter’s administration and how immigration became slightly more difficult for Cubans. He explains that a new immigration law during his presidency would no longer recognize immigrants from a communist country as political refugees and would instead be on a case-by-case basis. “To claim political asylum, you had to show that you had an individual fear of persecution,” he says. Isabelle DeSisto, a former research student at the University of Havana and scholar on migration and regime types in Cuba, describes a mass migration of Cubans to the United States at this time. 

DeSisto describes the Mariel boatlift as a big wave of Cuban migration that left by boat when the Cuban economy failed. She notes that people who migrated during the Mariel boatlift tended to be poorer and less wealthy than the earlier wave of migrants. The journey was also incredibly dangerous for this group of Cubans. LeoGrande explains that “some estimates are that half the people that set out on rafts didn’t make it.”

LeoGrande also notes that thousands of Cuban migrants came to the United States during the Rafter Crisis in 1994. “The Clinton administration felt like it needed to sort of put a stop to this,” he explains. As a result, President Bill Clinton implemented the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy in 1995. LeoGrande mentions that if you made it to the United States under the policy, you were a dry foot and got to stay and could apply as a permanent resident. However, if you were picked up at sea, you were either sent back to Cuba or detained at the migration detention center, Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay is located in the southeastern part of Cuba and controlled by the U.S. “There are stories of people getting caught three, four, or five times and sent back to Cuba,” he says. 

DeSisto elaborates that after being elected president, Obama abolished the Wet Foot, Dry Foot policy to normalize relations with Cuba. Now, she speaks of more rigorous migration policies in the United States that follow regular lawful procedures. The real issue, LeoGrande argues, is the backlog of asylum applications that takes years. “Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans can petition to adjust their status to become permanent residents, and then their asylum claim is irrelevant,” he says. “Of the 750,000 some-odd Cubans that have arrived in the United States in the last three years, almost all of them have come through that mechanism.” 

Despite the evolution of Cuban migration policies, Rodríguez recognizes that he is fortunate to have left when he did. “I came here, and I was happy,” he explains. Although Rodríguez loves the United States, a piece of his heart remains in Cuba. “I love this country and would like to return to Cuba,” he says. “The people that put me out were the Cuban people.” Nowadays, Rodríguez describes that tourists are the only people who get to go back. Regardless of fantasizing about his return, he remembers how controlling the government was when he lived there and the disastrous economy. 

When speaking about the United States, Rodríguez isn’t afraid to preach his love for it. “You live in the best democracy in the world,” he says. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best.” 

“It seemed vaguely productive”, Zara explains when I asked her why she volunteered with Roots, a humanitarian organization in Grande-Synthe, Dunkirk. “I do study politics, so I write about these things in the abstract, but I thought it could be nice to get involved in that way. There’s only so many summers of uni left.” She pauses. “It’s not the most noble reason ever.”

I first met Zara O’Shea, 22, from Northern Ireland, when I visited Roots at the end of July this year. Roots, an environmentally conscious humanitarian organisation, provides aid to migrants hoping to cross the English Channel from France to the UK. According to its website, Roots was founded in 2017 when its founder and current President of the board of Trustees, Thomas Gilbert, started recycling old batteries to make low-cost power packs for migrants. Since then, the organization has hosted over 140 volunteers. Roots provides charging services and humanitarian aid to migrants and maintains free-standing water tanks and showers for migrants to use. Sarah Berry, the Treasurer of Roots, told me when I visited, “It’s really vital work we’re doing here. Nobody else is bothering.”

I followed their volunteers and coordinators on a day’s “community hub” aid distribution. We drove out in a convoy of cars and vans to a clearing nestled between a main road and some railway tracks, passing French CRS riot police on the way. Around the clearing are unused fields, bushes and trees that make it impossible to see beyond a few hundred yards in the furthest direction. There, they erected two gazebos weighed down by cinder blocks. They set up a generator connected to improvised wooden boards with dozens of charging ports. A hundred or so migrants from Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea, and a host of other countries were already there waiting—some standing talking in groups, others sitting on pieces of torn-up cardboard boxes. Throughout the day, different groups and people came and went. Migrants would constantly disappear and reappear from the trees and bushes. A local French collective arrived and gave out hot meals. A woman from Belgium showed up in her car and started handing out gloves and socks out of her trunk. A migrant woman set up a shop, a regular fixture apparently, out of a shopping cart, selling snacks and cigarettes. A winding line of male migrants stemmed from each provider and twisted around the clearing: mothers and children waiting on the side for whoever was queuing on their behalf. At one point, an ambulance with a police escort showed up to collect a pregnant Vietnamese woman in a “critical condition”, so a coordinator told me. 

My memory of Zara in Dunkirk is of her dressed in a faded hoody, combat pants, and her green Roots high-vis bib. The coordinators told everyone to stay in pairs, to stay in the clearing, and to stick near the gazebo —there had been a shooting in the area the night before. Zara and I watched over the children’s board game area and the charging station together. I was struck that day by Zara’s sense of humour in contrast to the other volunteers and coordinators who were very serious. A student at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Zara is now studying for a semester at UC Berkeley in California. Reflecting on the day we met, she says, “The stuff you’re seeing in Dunkirk doesn’t fit in with the normal conflicts you normally have and the stuff that’s bothering you in normal life. So you just can’t process it in the minute.” She laughs as she talks for much of our interview, just like when we spoke in Dunkirk. But it is still a laugh that does not seem sure of itself. I sense that Zara is still processing her month with Roots.

Dunkirk and Roots had never been Zara’s plan. “I was looking to go somewhere in Greece. It seemed suited more to my skill set. It’s more settled in Greece. There are people setting up schools and community centers there. I was looking for something more community-focused because I don’t have any hard skills. After all, I chose a humanities degree—silly.” She laughs. “I ended up spending my summer lifting cinder blocks.” 

Again, I asked her why, of all the things she could have done in the summer, she chose to work with refugees. This time, she goes further, “The focus of my studies is welfare organisations, and I’ve had a lot of involvement with the Free Palestine movement. A lot of that is about how I just don’t believe there should be borders. Obviously, I’m literally just a child so my opinion on this doesn’t matter, but I don’t think there should be borders or nations in an ideal world. I don’t think it’s right or fair in any way that some people are allowed to be born with so much and so much entitlement and others with nothing.” It is a recurring theme in our interview that Zara has pithy remarks for all my questions. Yet, when I press her, the speed of her responses gives me the impression that she has been asking herself the same things.

Zara applied to volunteer with a community organization in Greece, but was unsuccessful. She then found Roots on Instagram. “I emailed Sarah my CV, and she said yeah, that’s great.” Sarah Berry is the Treasurer of Roots. “It was all sorted within two hours of emailing her.”

Roots is unique among aid organizations in northern France because it provides its volunteers and coordinators with a communal living space. “We were all in this warehouse, and it had been renovated, so it was these little box rooms with two sets of bunks in each”, Zara explains. The Roots warehouse is on an industrial estate comprised of other gated warehouses and scrap heaps. Even in July, I remember it being dark and damp. At the top of a spiral staircase sticking out of one end of the warehouse is a loft. Inside, I found volunteers making cups of tea in a wood-floored kitchen while the coordinators made plans in their office. “On our days off, we all hung out together. And I do think that grated on the four volunteer coordinators because they had to behave in their roles even at home.” The Roots website explains that volunteer coordinators are “experienced and qualified individuals” who are “dedicated to ensuring that the services we deliver at the camp are dignified and sustainable.” Zara explains, “It was the social stuff that made me tweak because you can process the coordinator who you’re exchanging microaggressions with. So that was what I was crying on the phone to my mum about, not all the other stuff.” The Roots website also says, “[the coordinators] are at the camp every day to ensure that volunteers are comfortable, and the displaced individuals have a familiar face to approach with questions.” When I asked her how she felt about the living situation, however, Zara had no regrets. “The accommodation was a massive plus and why I chose to go to Roots—I wouldn’t have been able to afford it if my accommodation hadn’t been covered.”

Still, Zara does tell me that a couple of weeks after I visited Roots, there was an “implosion” at Roots. Izzy Redmayne, a 24-year-old English aupair working in France, arrived to volunteer at Roots soon after my visit. “Me and Zara were really… we were basically inseparable. We just shared one brain cell the entire time that we were together. It was really important to me because I felt like everyone hated me”, Izzy explained. The trouble started, Izzy continued, on her first day during a briefing when she was told that she must not speak to any journalists. When Izzy then told them she had started writing articles for a French paper, it was “really, really badly received.” She explains, “The whole reason I didn’t think to mention it before was because I was just like this random girl running around France asking people what they thought of Le Pen… I realized that was a mistake because I knew in myself I wasn’t gonna write anything.” Izzy told me that after this, she was only allowed to work in the warehouse preparing aid packets filled with hygiene products and refilling the water tanks that Roots maintains around the area migrants. “People did talk to me, but, like, only to call me a narc.” Not long after Izzy arrived, the four coordinators resigned. “The coordinators kind of set the tone for let’s all ostracize this girl. So after they left, things got a bit calmer.” When I asked how things improved, Izzy explained, “Zara is such a charmer and so popular. And so I think it really helped me to kind of have that vote of confidence from her. It meant that other people were much more accepting of me because I kind of was attached to Zara. And everyone loved Zara because she’s just amazing.” Zara does not want to discuss the episode beyond relating the facts and connecting me with Izzy, with whom she is still in regular contact.

Although she acknowledges she might not have processed them at the time, Zara tells me that there were very challenging moments working with the migrants in the field in addition to the drama going on inside the warehouse. On July 29th, days after I visited Roots, a 17-year-old boy armed with a knife attacked a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England. Three girls under the age of 10 were killed. Nine more children and two adults were injured. Following the attack, misinformation about the identity of the attacker spread online. News website “Channel 3 Now” falsely claimed that the attacker was a Muslim, undocumented migrant who had arrived in the UK on a boat from France. In the wake of such misinformation, riots started across the UK. In Rotherham, South Yorkshire, a mob of rioters tried to storm and set fire to the Holiday Inn Express, a hotel housing asylum seekers whose claims were waiting to be heard. A 27-year-old British man has since pleaded guilty to arson with intent to endanger life and has been sentenced to nine years in prison. “During the riots, there was lots of stuff online where the far-right would be threatening to come across on the ferries”, Zara tells me. “We would have a lot of cars circling.” When I asked her what she meant by this, she explained that members of the “far right” would drive on the roads around the distribution site in loops. “Sometimes there would be too many cars circling around the lot, and the coordinators would be, like, this is sort of unsafe”, Zara laughs. “The Red Cross left that day.” 

The far right was not the only source of danger to Roots volunteers or migrants, however. “There were also times where there were shots fired, and we had to leave,” Zara says. Izzy echoed what Zara told me about the gunshots, saying it “happened a few times.” She continued, “being right in the middle of camps surrounded by all these people with gunshots really quite close. Like, close to the point where the coordinator was saying, woah. That’s close. Does anyone wanna leave?” Izzy summarised, “It was quite an intense day.” Focus on smuggling gangs has increased since the election of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose slogan for combatting illegal migration to the UK is “smash the gangs”. Earlier this year, BBC investigative reporter Sue Mitchell and former aid worker Rob Lawrie released “To Catch a Scorpion” a podcast series in which they tracked the notorious head of a smuggling gang that operates in Dunkirk to Iraq. Following the release of the series, Barzan Majeed was arrested by local police in Iraq. “One of the new girls came and said it was really cute how those South Sudanese guys would walk around with their best friends when actually I don’t know, it was probably the case they were in a gang together. But she was like, it’s so cute that they’re besties. It was really funny at the time.” Back in July, Zara pointed out to me how certain migrants were allowed to skip the line to receive aid, likely because of a smuggling gang connection. When I asked her if her proximity to organised crime and the gunshots scared her, Zara says they did not. “I didn’t find that aspect challenging. There’s a lot of traveller communities where I live and they would have their personal beef, but I had no part in it because I’m not a traveller.” She tells me about two families with “major beef.” She explained, “I could interact with either of them, but I could interact with either of them because I had no skin in the game.” Zara also tells me about another incident she remembers that is harder to place in any specific context. “There was also this guy who was walking around swinging a tent pole, so we had to cancel water distribution one day. He had glued a Gilette razor to the end. Like arts and crafts.”

Out of everything that happened in her month with Roots, Zara seems to suggest that what she still thinks about most often is her interactions with a migrant child. “There was this girl who was very clingy, but she wanted to be lifted onto the table and touching any of the kids is a big no-no. One of the coordinators was like you should instil a bit of ‘stranger danger’, but I find it hard to be mean to children; call me evil. I didn’t discourage it. I’m a big softie. I’m a horrible babysitter.” Zara pauses for a while before continuing, “She went missing at a certain point. No, there was a child that went missing, and we don’t know if that child was ever found or if it was her. But I never saw her again, and I never saw her family again. And I worry a lot that the family made the crossing. They had lots of children, and I don’t know what I would do in that situation. I’m not a mother. I don’t know what my mother would do in that situation. The way that it works with the crossing is that you’re given no notice. You’re just told we’re going today and you have to, you know, make moves. I just think about it a lot. If she’d just been left or trafficked somewhere…” The tone of our interview changes when Zara starts talking about the child. There is no hint of mirth in her voice anymore. “I was on water refilling that day, so I left early, and then the volunteers told me a kid was missing. I don’t know it was her, though. There were lots of kids..” She trails off. “In my head because I’m not rational. I just worry that it is her and that it’s my fault. I never saw that family again. I didn’t teach her the stranger enough. I think about that a lot.” 

The plight of migrant children in Northern France has been an ongoing concern of aid organizations since migrants started to gather in increasing numbers on the French coast in 2015. In 2016, after the eviction of the Calais “Jungle” migrant encampment, Reuters reported that roughly one third of the 179 migrant children tracked by aid organizations had gone missing. In 2021, Human Rights Watch released a report on the French Police’s practice of regular evictions of migrant encampments that called on child protection authorities in France “to do more to give [unaccompanied migrant children] as full sense as possible of the range of options available to them” in the context of trafficking being “widely thought to be a concern” in Grande-Synthe. Traffickers aside, the environment itself is hazardous to children in Grande-Synthe. I saw so myself on my visit when one of the Roots coordinators run shouting and waving onto the nearby train tracks to grab a migrant child who had set up a small tent between the rails, oblivious to the oncoming train. Anything could have happened to the child Zara is talking about. 

Zara found it hard to leave Roots when her month was up. She had to return home before starting her semester abroad in California. I get the sense from our conversation that there was some guilt tied up in how she felt when it was time to leave. Eventually, she says, “I don’t think it actually matters if it’s morally pure or not. Your outcomes only matter.” She continues, “We can’t all be selfless all the time.” and goes on to say, “I still read the Guardian and follow the topic.” Even though she has now left France, she still finds herself being contacted by migrants. She explains, “It’s very easy to find my instagram. I’ve got a lot of dms from people who’ve made the crossing, and they say, ‘oh I’d love to know someone here,’ and I just haven’t responded to any of them because I feel weird about the whole thing.” There is another long pause after she says this. “My poor friends had to listen to me cry and talk about these things.” Zara starts laughing again. 

I’m deeply impressed (and inspired by) all the cases of creative journalism put on display this week. In a profession that sometimes feels tired and rigid, it’s really cool to see imaginative work being done and I have many questions. How do you reconstruct stories after the fact, reliably? How do you counter other (malicious) media narratives? How does AI help (and, I assume, complicate) open-source reporting? With an abundance of information that you can dig into, how do you even begin knowing where to start? With everything that we are able to access, what is still lost to us? 

I found it really interesting that the documentary emphasized organization to such an extent. The internet is disorganized and seeing the process of investigation rather than archival is powerful. Thinking about how documentation is only powerful when accurately narrativized, I felt like many of our readings this week pointed to equally sinister uses of information. Living in an age of hyper surveillance, it’s nice to imagine that we can utilize technological paper trails as citizen-journalists, but it also feels like a scary affirmation of the ways all documentation (and much of journalism) contributes to state databases. Data can always be twisted, and Russia claiming the hospital they bombed was uninhabited (despite the videos showing the opposite) is an obvious example of how fact can easily be denied or manipulated. And as there begins to be more and more content on the internet, propaganda and misinformation spread so quickly. Sometimes it feels like we spend more time fighting misinformation than creating new positive information. Still worth it.

All these readings were unfortunately framed for me by another recent article I read, which talked about the abundance of documentation that we have available about Assad’s crimes in Syria. Nothing has happened as a result of that documentation. While continually amazed by the investigations that are possible, issues of accountability immediately come up. In Bellingcat’s case, the character that is given attention in the documentary is al-Werfalli. With outstanding arrest warrants and an abundance of evidence, he died in 2021 without having ever been to court. My generation is already distrustful of a failing ICC – Sinwar, Netanyahu, Putin, we aren’t seeing arrests at any significant level. It’s incredibly meaningful to transmit information, but the question then becomes how we translate that into action (which is a recurring theme and issue in journalism). I’m really impressed by the Ukrainian Government’s effort to document the war through civilian crowdsourcing – this seemingly will give a very comprehensive picture of human rights abuses, a database of information that can be mined for criminal evidence. But how do we get that evidence to mean anything?

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.