Help a journalist get an old truck to report safely in TJ

The day after the presidential election, I spent a lot of time thinking about all of the work that it took to cover what was going on in the world of immigration under the first Trump administration.

I was a fairly new reporter when Donald Trump was first voted into office. I was working at my first job out of grad school and had been assigned the immigration beat for a couple of months when he won the election.

His first week, he signed three executive orders that mapped out his plan to restrict access to U.S. soil and to deport many who were here. As an immigration reporter at the San Diego-Tijuana border, I witnessed first-hand how many of those promised policies were eventually implemented, first in pilot programs here and then expanded along the length of the southwest border.

While that was happening, I grew into my job by reporting deeply, humanly and carefully. I focused on human stories that held government agencies accountable, and I did my best to tell the story of the whole person in front of me, not just the thing that had been done to them.

In 2017, that meant visiting a Syrian refugee family during Ramadan to learn about how the parents and daughters became separated from the family's only son as they fled for their lives, and how U.S. policy made it nearly impossible for them to reunite. It also meant writing about some of the first family separation cases under the Trump administration, months before the program was formally announced.

In 2018, it meant spending time with the traumatized girlfriend of an undocumented college student who had been taken by Border Patrol from her car and later visiting the student himself in the detention center. That year, I also followed the cases of asylum seekers who arrived at the border in migrant caravans, and I documented the U.S. government's surveillance of the people who provided humanitarian aid to the migrants.

In 2019, I waited for days and weeks at a time in a plaza on the south side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry to learn about the ways that U.S. officials and Mexican officials were working together to keep asylum seekers from reaching U.S. soil. That plaza was also where I waited to meet asylum seekers returned to Tijuana through the Remain in Mexico program.

And, in 2020, I stayed ready by my phone for people held in immigration custody to call and tell me about the lack of COVID-19 protections there. I also mourned with community members about the loss of loved ones during the pandemic and the way the border affected their ability to grieve.

In 2020, I also published a four-part series on the U.S. asylum system that told the stories of a Nicaraguan Cuban woman named Bárbara who was placed in the Remain in Mexico program and a Honduran man named Yovin Estrada Villanueva who was denied asylum, deported and then killed by the people that he said he was fleeing.

I continued under the Biden administration until the newspaper where I worked, The San Diego Union-Tribune, sold in July 2023. I left soon after to figure out the best path forward for me as a journalist and as a person. I've been working on several projects (a book and a news outlet that I'm excited to tell you about in the future) and holding down several part time jobs to get by.

I've missed doing my job, and as I look ahead to the second round of the Trump administration, I think the best thing that I can offer is to get back out there doing journalism full time. I have freelancing relationships with several outlets, and I'm launching a newsletter on Substack.

To help me do this work to the fullest, and to stay safe in a job that comes with some amount of risk, I am asking for your support.

I haven't freelanced more since leaving the Union-Tribune partly because I don't have a vehicle that can safely navigate the Tijuana neighborhoods I need to visit. Often, going to harder-to-reach areas of the city is the only way to find migrants and deportees whose voices aren't being heard.

I've launched this GoFundMe to help buy an old truck or SUV that sits up high enough that it won't scrape on Tijuana's pot holes and that has 4-wheel drive to get across the city's trickier roads. (If GoFundMe isn't your thing, you can venmo me @edukate.)

I know many people are in difficult financial situations right now, and I am not asking for anyone to give beyond their means. (I feel weird enough asking for any kind of help.)

If you're not able to contribute financially, please consider this an invitation to subscribe for free to my newsletter and thank you.

And, if you're able to help get this journalist back out in the field in the way that I used to be so that I can help you see what's going on, thank you.