Journalists focus on individuals to tell the US border story

Four women journalists, working as 2018 fellows of the International Women’s Media Foundation, focused on individuals to tell the story of immigrants at the United States border. The four described their reporting at a July 26 event co-sponsored by the Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Tamara Merino, an independent documentary photographer based in Chile and Lujan Agusti, a photographer and storyteller based in Mexico and Argentina, worked together. They aimed to tell the hopeful aspect of the story, Merino said.

In humanitarian crises, “There are so many people helping each other,” Merino said.

They chose three people: a Mexican priest, a Texas sheriff and a migrant with his son, Agusti said. The priest maintains a space on the Mexican side of the border where migrants can recover from their journey to the border before attempting to cross, she said, adding that he also maintains a diner for the migrants. Thomas Marburger, Eagle Pass sheriff, is sympathetic to migrants, she said. Finally they told the story of a single father with his young son.

“That was one thing we found at the border. There were so many fathers, not parents, just fathers with their young sons," Agusti said.

Meghan Dahliwal, a freelance photojournalist based in Mexico City, described two stories she covered at the border in 2017 before becoming an IWMF fellow, and before the zero-tolerance policy of the Trump administration was in place. She described a group of women midwives from San Diego offering pre- and post-natal care to migrant women in shelters. Showing a picture of a migrant woman receiving an ultrasound in the back seat of a Subaru, she said the midwives were practicing “guerrilla medicine.” The second story from 2017 that she described covered Haitians who had traveled overland from Brazil and found they couldn’t cross the border. They illustrate the dilemma of people who find themselves unexpectedly having to make a life in an unfamiliar country, she said.

As an IWMF fellow, Dahliwal was assigned to cover the organized caravan of 1200 people that attracted President Donald Trump’s attention. Such caravans began in 2010, she said. The organizers determined that 150 of people had strong cases for asylum and brought them to the border, where, she said, it took nine days to put 150 people through the process. Border officials declare the system “at capacity” and don’t process the asylum seekers, which she called an “effective deterrent method.”

Sarah Kinosian, a freelance journalist, described the case of a Salvadorian who was separated from his daughter at the border. He was told to sign papers described as his asylum application in order to get his daughter back, but he was actually assigning his deportation papers. Because of journalistic attention, he was reunited with his daughter, but was then subjected to extortion by Salvadorian gangs, she said.

The gangs thought he had been paid by journalists and demanded $6,000, which he did not have, making it dangerous for him to return to El Salvador, she said. Like the Haitians, Dhaliwal had described, this Salvadorian was now faced with making a life in a third country, she said.

Moderator Jasmin Garson Garcia, a reporter for National Public Radio, asked the panel how they coped with the emotional toll of such stories. The positive answers were talking to others who were having, or had had, such experiences. However, panel members also mentioned their feelings of guilt upon returning to their usual lives.

According to Elisa Lees Munoz, executive director of IWMF, the foundation provides its fellows with a week’s assignment and with fixers, drivers and hostile-environment training. Merino mentioned that she and Agusti were always accompanied by security guards.