By Aly Colon
We report about the people who cross the border into the United States. We cover the debate about whether they should be allowed to enter this country. Space gets devoted to the political and social discussions regarding what we should do with them if they don’t have the documents they need to stay here. We might even offer coverage about what happens to them during deportation proceedings.
What journalists don’t do often enough is tell people what happens to those immigrants after they get deported.
We tend to ignore a host of questions that could tell us the untold stories of what happens when the immigrants return to their country of origin:
- How do they cope?
- What must they endure?
- How does life change for them?
- What does the country they came from do for them?
- What about the children born in the U.S. who were transported to a country once home to their parents?
The Seattle Times focuses on those questions and more in two-part series. The first part ran last Sunday and carried the headline “Life after an Illegal Immigrant Is Sent Home.” The second part, “Across the Border, ‘a Human Crisis’ is Brewing,” ran Monday.
Times reporter Lornet Turnbull follows Ana Reyes and her children back to Mexico in her first story and graphically portrays the contrast between Reyes’ life in Washington state and Mexico City. Turnbull’s description, coupled with Dean Rutz’s photos, shows readers what the post-deportation life looks like. The second story examines what deportations like Reyes’ mean to Mexico.
More of these stories — stories that provide a fuller perspective on a story that is multi-faceted and intensely personal — would help put flesh on the skeletal immigration debate we so often focus on.
