Kids on the Line
‘They used the kids to get to parents like me’: How ICE’s human smuggling initiative targeted parents and children
A review of the operation by Reveal casts doubt on the official narrative.
Staff
Biography
Laura C. Morel will spend the coming year covering immigration for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting under a special reporting fellowship focused on migrant children and families.
Morel previously was a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, where she covered criminal justice issues. She was a 2017 finalist for a Livingston Award, which recognizes young journalists, for an investigation with two other reporters into police calls at Walmart.
In 2016, Morel became one of Reveal’s inaugural investigative fellows. The program offers reporters embedded at their home outlets a stipend, training and mentoring from Reveal to pursue an investigative project. It is aimed at increasing diversity among the ranks of investigative journalists. Morel’s fellowship project exposed the extent of Florida’s gun theft problem.
Born and raised in Miami, Morel is fluent in Spanish.
Articles
Immigration
Salvadoran man has evidence he’s not a gang member. US still separated him from his kids
The government hasn’t provided any proof of its claim that the man is affiliated with MS-13. He hasn’t seen his two kids in three months.
Immigration
No one on the inside can talk about what’s happening at the tent city for migrant kids
Lack of access to the pop-up federal detention camp has frustrated town residents and alarmed advocates who question the conditions there.
Immigration
Government could hold migrant families indefinitely in unlicensed detention centers under new plan
New regulations would affect the nearly 13,000 children currently in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Immigration
The government won’t talk about its training for officers and troops at the border
We asked what training are officers and troops at the border getting. The government didn’t answer.
Kids on the Line
Shiloh had a history of death and drugging. Texas schools keep sending students there
At least seven districts have sent students with special needs to Shiloh Treatment Center in recent years.
Immigration
Immigrant children still being drugged at shelter despite judge’s order, lawyers say
Attorneys for immigrant children held at a troubled Texas shelter say kids continue to be forcibly drugged there despite a judge’s order.
Immigration
A Mauritanian man escaped his country’s ethnic cleansing. ICE deported him anyway.
Seyni Malick Diagne lived in the U.S. for 17 years. Battling cancer, he was deported last month to Mauritania, where he faces arrest and enslavement.
Immigration
A judge ordered immigrant children removed from troubled Texas facility. They’re still there.
Nearly a month ago, a judge ordered immigrant children removed from a troubled Texas facility and told the government to stop drugging them without consent. That hasn’t happened.
Immigration
Federal government files new regulations that will affect how migrant families are treated
Even as it fails to reunify hundreds of families, the federal government says the court oversight mandated in a landmark case is no longer needed.