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During President Trump’s first term, Miriam Jordan, a national immigration correspondent at The New York Times, spent a lot of time along the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s where Mr. Trump’s immigration policies were playing out.
This time around, Ms. Jordan has been traveling across the country to places far from the border, where Mr. Trump’s promises of a wide-scale crackdown and mass deportations have shaken immigrant communities.
She traveled to Ohio, where thousands of Haitians living under Temporary Protected Status were thrust into the national spotlight during the election. She reported from Denver, where some Venezuelans have been planning to leave the country on their own terms, rather than risk being detained by immigration agents and deported in shackles. Across the country, she has found a demand among immigrants for pocket-size “red cards,” which list their legal rights in case they are approached by federal agents.
“Before, I spent a lot of time talking to recent arrivals. Now I’m focusing on people who are living in the country, many of whom have been here for decades,” Ms. Jordan, who is based in Los Angeles, said during an interview with Times Insider.
She discussed that pattern and, more broadly, how her work has changed since the first Trump term. This exchange has been edited and condensed.
As a national immigration correspondent, how has your work felt the past couple of months?
The workload has definitely increased because the Trump administration has made immigration a key focus. The president entered office with a promise to carry out mass deportations, and he seems intent on delivering on that promise. On his first day, Mr. Trump signed a litany of consequential executive orders on immigration, and new policies continue to be announced at breathtaking pace. There is a lot to digest and explain to our readers.
What are some of the urgent changes you have seen? How do you choose what to write about?
I have to give credit to my colleagues in Washington, who tend to write about the policies when they’re announced. I tend to tackle the fallout or impact of the policies on the ground with my field reporting. How are the measures affecting immigrants? How could they hurt businesses that rely on immigrants? How are communities responding?
I try to detect trends. For instance, unlike in the past, immigrants who have not committed crimes are being targeted for arrest, placed in detention and being marked for deportation.
Even people with a green card, who have legal permanent residency, are being arrested when they are re-entering the country after going abroad. These are people who have been living in the United States for many years. Perhaps they committed a nonviolent offense when they were in their 20s, and now they’re in their 50s. When they re-entered the country, that offense popped up in a database and, suddenly, they’ve become vulnerable to deportation.
When I’m researching potential stories to develop, I read small and big newspapers across the country. I talk to a wide range of people, including lawyers, demographers, academics and people who work at nonprofit organizations that advocate for immigrants. I try to identify interesting characters and patterns that are developing. When I see a pattern, I begin to feel confident that there’s likely something happening on a larger scale, which should be reported and written about for our readers.
You also interview immigrants. And the Trump administration has created a climate of fear in immigrant communities — deliberately, you have written. Are you finding that immigrants are less willing to speak to a journalist?
Listening to immigrants and telling their stories has always been core to my coverage. But absolutely, there is heightened concern among immigrants, both those who are undocumented and those who are lawfully in the country, about talking to me. They fear that if they share their names, they risk becoming targets of immigration authorities. Or maybe they have been living under the radar for decades, and by speaking with me, they worry that they could alert authorities to their presence in the country.
As a result of this, I’ve had discussions with editors about using just the person’s given name. This is not my preference, nor the preference of the editors at The Times. But given the current immigration-enforcement climate, we need to be flexible in identifying some people by their first names, in order to best explain how policies are really affecting their lives.
There are green-card holders in this country who are now wary of talking to a reporter like me. They don’t want to attract undue attention to themselves. Even more extraordinary is that there are Americans, whether they have favorable things to say about immigrants or work with immigrants, who are also requesting anonymity. That’s new.
You covered immigration during the first Trump administration. What else has changed?
When Trump entered office the first time, he was very much focused on the border and building a wall to stanch the flow of unlawful immigration into the United States. This time around, his focus is primarily on undocumented immigrants in the interior of the United States — people living and working everywhere. That has created a level of fear that is much more elevated than it was during his first term.
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