Since the start of the second term for President Donald Trump (and even on the campaign trail) immigration enforcement has been a primary focus of the administration.

Attacks on birthright citizenship, arrests, enforcement in various parts of the country, weakening protections and the ripple effects of deportations have been non-stop and can occasionally be difficult to keep track of.

In addition to my broader political coverage I’ve spent much of the past few months focused on keeping track of these impacts, how real people are dealing with the fallout and who is working to find protections for the millions of immigrants living in the United States who lack permanent authorization.

What questions do you have about immigration and the current administration? Curious about visas or the status of birthright citizenship? Wondering about how I find my stories or how I focus on what to cover with such a big topic? Ask me anything.

PROOF

I’m Mel Leonor Barclay, politics reporter for The 19th News. I’ve been covering the Trump administration’s ramping up of immigration enforcement. Ask me anything!
byu/19thnews inpolitics

4 comments

  1. We’ve been seeing the hammer dropping on the lower end of the scale, probably due to ease of access and the limited likelihood of the victims being able to fight back legally. From your investigations, has ICE also been going after H1B visa holders?

  2. Do you think it would make sense for reporters to really harp upon the economic impact from what Trump is doing? Specifically the cost that they’re incurred for each person they grab off the streets, the costs of their interment camps and actually deporting them, and most importantly in the lost revenue at local levels?

    I feel like focusing on the inhumanity of it all just doesn’t reach the MAGAs at all. They don’t care. They voted *for* the cruelty and also simply do not understand why it’s bad or how it could happen to them. But if they realized that this is going to cost so much more and not see any gains, I’m hoping maaaaaybe that might reach them?

  3. How do we convince the right that immigrants (documented or undocumented) really aren’t a threat to anyone and don’t require such a brutal force cracking down on them?

  4. Hello, and thanks for engaging with this community. I have two questions:

    – ICE was given tens of billions of dollars in the most recent federal budget. Roughly how much of that money has been spent, or at least attached to a specific project, at this point?

    – Do you think we’ve reached the point where we can truthfully refer to the immigrant detention centers the administration is building as “concentration camps”?

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