Immigration Imprisonment procedures and how they affect America

When a tragic story becomes so common that it stops generating indignation and changes, it’s a sign that it needs more analysis and buzz. Wrong should never be accepted as regular, habitual, as the usual.  Mass massacres, deaths in a distant war and separation of immigrant families by deportations all share that as a characteristic and that’s a crisis we must overcome with more information and discussion among the general public and our legislators.

The destruction of families by raids and deportations has undoubtedly a direct effect on whoever is in that family, society’s foundation, but the impact goes beyond them. Those experiences create a series of individual conditions that will cost the country a lot socially and economically in the long term. After all, won’t the Latino community be a demographic majority in a few years and haven’t millions of people from that community been affected by arrests and detention institutions? The objective for this project is to examine that impact of procedures and standards used by immigration authorities in raids and detention centers.

The challenge will be to develop a bilingual, multimedia package in non-linear and linear versions, because I think that the order in which we present facts and testimonies has an effect on the way the reader understands the story. I feel that’s one aspect that’s been overlooked by several multimedia projects I’ve seen online from other news outlets and I want to take advantage of the richness in the immigration topic to use today’s online storytelling methods and make the story more interactive and digestible for users.

Immigration is a topic that I’ve chosen to cover since the beginning of my short career, not only because of the vast array of angles it offers a journalist, but also because it’s a topic that I’ve been able to explore personally, opening my eyes to several things that should be addressed more often for the sake of equality, justice and accountability, all foundations of modern democracies. For those and many other reasons, I’m very excited to produce this project with my co-worker Annabelle and, along the way, share and learn from other passionate colleagues. The story will air in Univision and will offer extra features online, so stay tuned!