A young woman clings to a tree as masked men try to peel her off. The men wrench one of the woman’s arms behind her back, then stuff her into the back of an unmarked SUV as bystanders film and shout. She was selling food outside a Home Depot in West Los Angeles when federal agents chased her down and arrested her.  

Videos of aggressive immigration raids like this have become commonplace as the Trump administration pursues its goal of deporting millions of people over the next four years. 

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting people in front of their kids during school dropoffs, on the way to church, and at routine check-ins at immigration offices. Communities are pushing back, leading to clashes with police and protests. These raids are remaking the country. 

“Being forced apart like this is tearing through the heart of our home and community,” says Cecelia Lizotte, the sister of a Nigerian man in ICE detention.

This week on Reveal, producers Katie Mingle and Steven Rascón and reporter Julia Lurie tell stories about the people swept up in President Donald Trump’s mass deportations and the families that are left behind.

Dig Deeper

Listen: Trump’s Deportation Black Hole (Reveal)

Read: Hiding From ICE in LA (Mother Jones)

Read: “You’re Here Because of Your Tattoos” (Mother Jones)

Read: What It’s Like to Live Through LA’s Long Deportation Summer (CalMatters)

Read: They Saw Their Neighbors Taken Away by ICE. Then They Made a Plan. (The New York Times)

Read: ICE Detention Numbers Have Reached a Record High (Mother Jones)

Read: ICE Is Extremely Desperate for You to Work for Them (Mother Jones)

Read: Report: Teen With Disabilities Detained by ICE Outside School in Los Angeles (Mother Jones)
Read: Alarm After FBI Arrests US Army Veteran for “Conspiracy” Over Protest Against ICE (The Guardian)

Credits

mother jones logo

Reporters: Katie Mingle, Julia Lurie, Aisha Wallace-Palomares, Steven Rascón, and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes | Producers: Katie Mingle, Steven Rascón, Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, and Michael I Schiller | Editor: Cynthia Rodriguez | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Fact checker: Artis Curiskis | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Original score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Legal review: Victoria Baranetsky | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson

Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, and by Reveal listeners.

Transcript

Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.

Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. There have been videos circulating lately that I just can’t get out of my mind.  
Speaker 2:If you have an ID and a [inaudible 00:00:12] of course you can take her.  
Speaker 3:Excuse me.  
Speaker 4:Oh, oh, no, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.  
Al Letson:One shows this petite young woman holding onto a tree, gripping it with everything she has, while this older man, a guy with silver, gray hair, grabs her arm twisting it behind her back.  
Speaker 4:Are you kidding me, old man?  
Speaker 2:What you’re doing is (beep) illegal.  
Speaker 4:What you’re doing is kidnapping. What you’re doing is [inaudible 00:00:33].  
Al Letson:The older guy has a mask on, he’s wearing black sunglasses, he’s got a gun and a utility belt but no uniform. And he’s using everything he has to try and peel the woman off that tree.  
Speaker 4:What you’re doing is [inaudible 00:00:47]. What the (beep) is wrong with you? Get the (beep) back. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?  
Al Letson:She must understand, this is a losing battle for her, but she’s holding on for dear life. The older guy isn’t alone, there are others, they have guns and they’re also wearing masks.  
Speaker 4:They’re kidnapping her.  
Speaker 5:[Inaudible 00:01:03].  
Al Letson:Eventually, the masked people get the woman off the tree and manage to push her into the back of an SUV. Her red apron stays on during the whole ordeal. She’s wearing an apron because she’d been selling food by a Home Depot when federal agents chased her down and arrested her. According to ICE, the woman is a migrant without legal status in the US. Arrests and confrontations like this one are surging across the country.  
Donald Trump:We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.  
Speaker 7:A shocking ICE arrest was caught on video.  
Speaker 8:Now on the ground, on the ground.  
Speaker 9:[inaudible 00:01:45]  
Speaker 10:Protests are breaking out in response.  
Speaker 11:President Trump has a clear message for those that are in our country illegally. Leave now.  
Speaker 12:Stay indoors when possible and know your rights. Do not go out unless necessary. Stay at home and do not open the door to strangers.  
Al Letson:There are roughly 60,000 people in ICE detention according to NBC. Less than a third of them have criminal convictions.  
Speaker 13:No, Mummy.  
Speaker 14:They just smashed the window of that SUV and then they forced this man out of the car onto the ground.  
Al Letson:ICE is arresting people in front of their kids at school drop-offs, on the way to church, and at routine check-ins at immigration offices. And it’s only the beginning. The Trump administration’s mega spending bill will grow ICE’s budget from $8 billion a year to nearly 28 billion. More than many large nations spend on their entire military. ICE raids are remaking the country.  
Speaker 15:New census data shows that the foreign-born population in the US has declined by 2.2 million people from January to July. That’s the biggest six month drop on record.  
Al Letson:The thing is, those numbers, they’re not just numbers. Every single one of them is a person. For years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have tried and failed to pass the kinds of immigration reforms that could have created a pathway for many of these folks to remain here legally. Instead, they’ve been vanishing with little to no due process. Who are they? And what happens to the family, jobs, and communities they leave behind?  
 We begin at Loganville High School in the suburbs of Atlanta. In May, the school held its graduation ceremony. There were speeches from the valedictorian and the principal. An impressive rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. And of course, the handing out of diplomas.  
Speaker 16:Say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light.  
Al Letson:But one graduate wasn’t there to receive his. Josue Trejo Lopezz had been deported just two weeks before the ceremony, along with his brother. Producer, Katie Mingle, has the story.  
Katie Mingle:Let me introduce you to these brothers. There’s Josue, the graduate, and his brother, Jose, who’s older, but just by a year. Their mom wanted them to have similar names they told me because she always liked the idea of having twins. She also had them wearing matching outfits all through their childhood and well into their adolescence. Until finally it occurred to them that it might be nice not to do this anymore.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:We were like, “You know what? Why are we dressing the same?”  
Katie Mingle:This is Jose, he’s the older one.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I told my brother I want to dress differently than you, I don’t want people to see that we are wearing the same shoes, the same shirt, the same pair of pants. I want to have a different style. It was around the age of 15 to 16. And I told my mom and she was like, “Okay, that’s fine, if that’s what you want, you can do it.” So my mom started buying different type of clothes. It was the same, but it was a different color at least. At least it was a different color, we were not looking the same.  
Katie Mingle:Now the brothers are 19 and 20 and they look different. Jose has glasses and Josue doesn’t. Josue has recently been sporting a long handlebar mustache that Jose is always telling him to trim. But still they’re very close.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Like something happens to him, well, I will care about it, I’m there for him. And something happens to me, he’s there for me.  
Katie Mingle:That’s Josue. And Jose has something to add.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:Well, what he’s basically trying to say is that we are really supportive to one another. I would call our brother relationship like best friends. We are always together. And if I buy a pair of shoes and he doesn’t buy one, I don’t buy mine because I’m like, “You know what? I feel bad.”  
Katie Mingle:Josue and Jose left El Salvador with their mom when they were 10 and 11. It was 2016, and El Salvador had recently recorded the highest murder rate of any country in the western hemisphere. Jose told me gang members had started approaching kids at school offering them cell phones to join up. The boys’ mom wanted to bring her sons to a place where they’d be safer and have a chance at a better future. Plus a lot of their relatives were already in the US. So the family took a long journey through Guatemala and Mexico, crossing the border into Texas, and eventually making their way to Georgia. Their aunt was living in a suburb of Atlanta and they moved in with her and her kids. Jose remembers how different it felt from El Salvador.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And now going to a country where you see kids playing basketball, playing soccer, or riding a bike in the street. You’re seeing all those beautiful houses, even the grass, the green grass, the landscape, it was so beautiful to me. And I was like, “Dude, I love this.” I really like this type of life.  
Katie Mingle:School was a different story though, a foreign country in and of itself. The brothers didn’t know what their teachers were saying. Jose said he used Google Translate to try to do his homework. Not speaking English was such an immense barrier that it sometimes felt to Jose like the only barrier.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I remember I used to tell myself, hey, when I learn the language, I’m not going to have bad grades, I’m going to have A’s and B’s.  
Katie Mingle:Their cousins told the boys to download Duolingo. And they did. They also watched TV and movies in English. And slowly they got better at the language and started to fit in.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:At the end, I was like, “Dude, this is what basically feeling an American is like.” Having friends, graduating from high school, good grades.  
Katie Mingle:In their early years in the country, an attorney had encouraged the boys and their mother to apply for asylum. In 2018 their claim was denied. And Josue, Jose and their mom, Alma, all received deportation orders. Since coming to the US, Alma had given birth to a third son, Mateo, a US citizen with significant disabilities. Alma didn’t believe Mateo could get the healthcare he needed in El Salvador, so she kept her family in the US and began looking into other pathways to remain here legally. In the meantime, they always went to their check-ins with ICE even when they interfered with other things.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I remember one time that we had a check-in during the finals, and I was like, “What can I do about it?” How am I going to deal with these two things going on at the same time? If I miss the final, I’m going to get a zero. If I miss the check-in, I’m going to be in a big deal with ICE.  
Katie Mingle:What did you do?  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I went to the check-in, I missed my final.  
Katie Mingle:Jose graduated from high school in May of 2023 and moved to New York City to live with a family friend. Josue should have graduated in the spring of 2024, but he was behind on credits. He was determined not to have to do a whole extra year of high school though. And his teacher told him he’d need to do a bunch of extra credits on top of his regular load of classes to be able to finish in December.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:She told me, “Look, you need to do 11 credits.” I was like, “Jeez, 11 credits.” But I tell myself, yeah, if I don’t do this I’m never going to get out of here. I even stop playing video games, I just focus on school. I did three credits in one month.  
Katie Mingle:Josue told me he worked harder than he’d ever worked. And he did it. He finished all of his high school credits in December of 2024. And he joined his brother in New York. His plan was to return to Georgia to walk in his high school graduation ceremony in May of this year. But that’s not what happened.  
 In March, the boys went to a routine check-in at an ICE field office in Manhattan. Their mom had traveled from Georgia to go with them. When they got there, they were told that the building was full and they’d have to send an email requesting another check-in. And then an ICE officer said something strange to Jose.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:He told me, “Good luck.” I was like, “Wait.” That’s kind of strange to me because during this whole time that I have to go check-ins never an ICE officer had told me good luck.  
Katie Mingle:The boys were hoping their next check-in would be in maybe six months or a year. But when they got the email it said they should report back in two days. This is the point where some people might have chosen not to show up, just lay low and hide out. But Jose told me they never considered this, they wanted to follow the rules. When they returned to the ICE office two days later, and were called up to the counter, the officer asked if they knew they had a deportation order.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I was like, “Yes, I know.” And he was like, “Okay, and are you doing something about it?” And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I have all my papers that my attorney gave me.” It was like this big. It was for especially juvenile status.  
Katie Mingle:The previous year in 2024, the boys had begun the process of applying for special immigrant juvenile status. If they got it, the status would allow them to remain in the country legally. Theirs was exactly the kind of situation that didn’t used to be a priority for ICE. In previous administrations, even in Trump’s first term, it was generally the case that if you had a deportation order but you could prove you were pursuing some kind of legal remedy, ICE wouldn’t detain you. This was especially true if you didn’t have a criminal record. And Jose and Josue have never been in trouble with the law. But none of this seemed to matter to the ICE officer who was looking at their paperwork.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:He only looked at the first page. And then he was like, “This is not going to help you, this is worth nothing basically.” And gave it back to me. And he was like, “Okay, give me a minute. I’m going to talk to my supervisor.”  
Katie Mingle:The boys went to sit down. They were nervous. Eventually, the officer came back and asked Jose and Josue to follow him to another area, away from their mom and little brother who they’d come with.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And then he told me, “Okay, you are being detained by ICE and you are going to be put in removing proceeding. If you have anything that you want to give it back to your mom, your phone, your wallet, give it to me right now so I can bring it to her.” I look back and my brother was in handcuff. When they put the handcuffs on me, I was like, “Is this really happening to us?” We had never been put in handcuffs because we had no problems with the law. I couldn’t express the feelings that I was feeling in that moment because I felt like a criminal.  
Katie Mingle:Just like Jose and Josue, more than half of all people arrested by ICE in New York City in the first five months of the Trump administration had no criminal record according to data gathered by The New York Times. And according to federal data, half of those arrested were detained just like this during routine check-ins and court appearances.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:They didn’t let us say at least bye to our mom, not to our little brother.  
Katie Mingle:The boys were taken to a detention facility in Buffalo, New York.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:And I told the ICE officer, “Hey, can you keep us together at least? Me and my brother together to the same detention facility on the same unit?” He was like, “Yeah, I’m going to try.” But I guess he didn’t try because we were separated as soon as we got to the detention facility.  
Katie Mingle:After a couple of weeks, their lawyer filed a petition, and they did get to be together. Jose, with the authority vested in his single extra year on this planet, tried to be strong for his younger brother.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:Basically, I was the pillar, I was the one holding everything at that moment. I told my brother, “Hey, bro, don’t cry or don’t act up, just relax, we’re going to go through this. Either way, if we don’t like it, we’re going to go through it.”  
Katie Mingle:Jose only cried once he told me, alone in the bathroom where Josue couldn’t see. Josue, for his part, tried to keep the mood light.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:I was just trying to make this guy laugh.  
Katie Mingle:On May 7th, both boys were deported back to El Salvador. They hadn’t been there in almost 10 years and they had no close family or friends still in the country. Their mom, Alma, is still in the US. It’s possible she’s been spared from deportation thus far because she’s the sole caretaker for her disabled son, Mateo.  
 I asked Alma if knowing what she knows now she regretted bringing Jose and Josue to the US. She told me she doesn’t. Her sons had so many more opportunities here than they would’ve had in El Salvador. But she told me that she does regret allowing them to go to that final check-in appointment with ICE.  
 A distant family friend, who the boys had never met, picked them up from the immigration office in El Salvador and let them live in his house for their first few months in the country. His name is also Jose, which is maybe why they always call him the old man.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Well, he’s an old man, he’s already 69 years old, so he’s older.  
Katie Mingle:It was from the old man’s apartment near the capital city of San Salvador that Josue watched his high school graduation ceremony on a live stream.  
Speaker 19:We made it. From freshman jitters to senior celebrations, we have navigated some of the most defining years of our lives. Tonight we celebrate  
Katie Mingle:Josue had planned to be there with his friends. He already had his cap and gown. Instead, he watched on YouTube as his former classmates’ names were called. And one by one they walked across the stage to get their diplomas.  
Speaker 20:Robert Torres, honors, going on.  
Josue Trejo Lopez:Now, we’re just watching to see my friends walking. I thought they’re not going to call my name.  
Katie Mingle:But then they did call his name.  
Speaker 20:Josue Trejo Lopezz.  
Katie Mingle:Older brother, Jose, was in another room and he could hear Josue watching the live stream.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I was hearing him watching the ceremony, and then hear they call his name and then he came out. I have a video of it because I was like, “I’m going to record just to have as a memory that this happened to us.”  
Katie Mingle:Jose holds up the phone selfie-style and films while his brother lays his head on his stomach and sobs. “Did they say your name at the graduation?” Jose asks his brother.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:37]  
Katie Mingle:“The good thing is that you got your diploma,” Jose tells him.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:46].  
Katie Mingle:“You managed to graduate, that’s good.”  
Jose Trejo Lopez:[foreign language 00:16:55].  
Katie Mingle:At the end of the graduation ceremony, a student speaker emphasizes that it isn’t just the end of one chapter, it’s the beginning of another. “It’s time to embrace the changes ahead,” she tells the crowd, “and walk confidently toward the future.” But when I ask Jose to imagine what a future might look like in El Salvador, he’s at a total loss.  
Jose Trejo Lopez:I don’t have an answer to that yet, or soon, because it is hard. It is hard to think about. I don’t know if we’re going to start looking for jobs. I don’t know if we’re going to start thinking about a future in here. First because it’s just going to be me and my brother, right? Being separated from our family is actually one of the biggest trauma that we have right now. Because who is going to be supporting us? Who’s going to be directing us in this country when we don’t know how the system works? I really want to go back to my family. I want to go back to the country that I call my home.  
Katie Mingle:Before they were deported, Jose and Josue both imagined they might attend a trade school of some kind, become mechanics or welders. Help support their mom and their little brother, and eventually have families of their own. Now they’re just hoping some way, somehow they get back to the country where that future still exists.  
Al Letson:As schools across the country start a new school year, teachers and administrators are bracing for what ICE’s continued expansion could mean for students, including how it might affect attendance. Last spring, some California school districts saw attendance drop by more than 20% because of fear over immigration raids.  
 That story was produced by Katie Mingle. When we come back, we’ll meet a restaurant owner trying to figure out how to keep her business open after her brother is detained by ICE.  
Speaker 21:It’s becoming almost like it’s not sustainable for me to just keep operating the way I’m operating. I did not include my brother being picked up by ICE in my business plan.  
Al Letson:You’re listening to Reveal.  
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. Like a lot of restaurants these days, the Nigerian restaurant Suya Joint in Boston has an Instagram account. Scrolling through the last few months of their posts is a mouth-watering experience. Pictures of stir-fried tofu and jollof rice, glistening fried plantains, pineapple upside-down cake. But in late June, there’s a different kind of post. The owner of the restaurant, Cecilia Lizotte, has written a note to her followers that begins, “Dear Suya Joint family, help us bring Paul home.” The note goes on. “Being forced apart like this is tearing through the heart of our home and community.” Cecilia’s brother, Paul, the manager of the restaurant, had been detained by ICE on his way to church.  
 The news over the last few months has been full of stories about restaurant employees being picked up by ICE, and when Mother Jones reporter, Julia Lurie, saw Suya Joint’s news on Instagram, it made her wonder what it’s like for the people left behind, what it’s like to run a restaurant or any business really, when a key employee, who happens to be your brother, suddenly disappears.  
Julia Lurie:I went to eat at Suya Joint for the first time in May with a reporter friend of mine who’d been raving about it. It was just a few weeks later when I saw the post on Instagram. The owner, Cecilia, would later refer to it as a cry for help, and that’s what it seemed like to me. Her post was basically saying, “I’m not sure if I can handle this.” It made me want to know more, so I headed back to Suya Joint.  
Cecelia Lizotte:So you see that this is where all of us have a Hi, hi, hi. Yeah. Those are everybody-  
Julia Lurie:That’s Cecilia greeting a kitchen full of cooks prepping for dinner.  
Cecelia Lizotte:It sounds so good in here.  
Speaker 4:Thank you. Thank you so much.  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia learned to cook from her grandmother, who ran a little restaurant in Central Nigeria. After she came to Boston in 1999, she started catering out of her home, which eventually led to opening Suya Joint as a brick and mortar. Now she has two locations and a food truck, and last year Cecilia was a semi-finalist for the prestigious James Beard Award.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Maybe inside, just it’s a little tighter.  
Speaker 4:Okay.  
Julia Lurie:We duck into a storage room away from the commotion to talk about Paul.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Don’t mind the mess.  
Julia Lurie:No problem. Cecilia and her brother balance each other out. Cecilia is the outgoing one. Loud, chatty, wears chunky jewelry in bold colors. Paul meanwhile is quiet, attentive, the go-to guy for critical behind-the-scenes jobs. It’s Paul who picks up ingredients from New York, who comes in to fix the plumbing in a pinch, or waits tables when Cecilia is short-staffed.  
Cecelia Lizotte:When I see him coming through the door, it’s like, I feel really, really safe. It’s like, “Yes, you are here.”  
Julia Lurie:Paul was on his way to church on Father’s Day when he was picked up by ICE. When I asked ICE about Paul’s case, a representative said that he’d been, quote, “Unlawfully residing in the United States since August 2019 when he violated the terms of his lawful admission.” Records show that Paul came to the US on a visitor visa in 2019 and applied for asylum later that year. When he was arrested, his case was ongoing. He had a social security number and a work authorization that’s valid until 2029. Under previous administrations, people like Paul wouldn’t have been a high priority for ICE, but things are different now. When he was arrested, Paul asked the officers if he could make a phone call to his sister.  
Cecelia Lizotte:I felt like someone just sucked my blood, my air, anything like, “How do you live?”  
Julia Lurie:Yeah. There’s not a playbook for someone in your situation.  
Cecelia Lizotte:No, there’s absolutely not a playbook. You wake up one day, you feel energized, and then within a twinkle of an eye, it’s almost like, “Where do I throw up?” It’s that bad. It’s terrible.  
Julia Lurie:There’s an eerie familiarity to Paul’s detention. The year before he came to the States, he was kidnapped by Boko Haram. The militant group was targeting journalists, and at the time Paul was working as a crime reporter for the Nigerian Television Authority. Paul talked about the kidnapping in a BBC documentary back in 2019.  
Paul Dama:I was scared. I was really, really scared because I started to imagine the trauma my family members were going to go through.  
Julia Lurie:Paul and Cecilia’s mom got the call from Boko Haram telling her he’d been kidnapped. Cecilia says her mom was literally speechless, kept fainting because of the news. The family scrambled to come up with the nearly $13,000 to free him. According to Paul’s asylum application, they even sold most of their property to make it happen. After four hellish days, Paul was released. Nigerian police told him they couldn’t guarantee a safety, advised him to leave the country. In his asylum application, Paul wrote, “This is why I’m here in the United States where I can feel safe and have my freedom guaranteed.”  
Cecelia Lizotte:And now in Boston, in America, literally right now as we speak, I just feel like, “Here’s another second kidnapping, he’s been picked up, and here we are at the mercy of everybody.”  
Julia Lurie:When I met with Cecilia, Paul had been sitting in a detention center in Dover, New Hampshire for two weeks. She seemed to be running on adrenaline moving 1,000 miles a minute. I had the sense that talking to a reporter was just one more item on her mile-long to-do list, which in a way, it was. She had to collect character statements for Paul’s upcoming hearing. She had to be there for her daughters, for her staff, for her relatives in Nigeria who were distraught about what was happening. And then there was Paul’s lawyer who could call at any moment looking for documents.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Before they can finish asking the question, I already know kind of the answer and I know exactly where to find it. And then, “Here you go, here you go.”  
Julia Lurie:Right now, Cecilia’s top priority is getting ready for the bond hearing, when a judge will decide if Paul can be released from detention while his asylum case is ongoing. Cecilia knows he faces an uphill battle. Last year, Paul was charged with two misdemeanors for operating a vehicle under the influence. Both times he was found sleeping in his stopped car, keys in the ignition according to police reports. Cecilia says he was in a dark place at the time, grieving the sudden loss of their mother and pulled over to sleep. In both cases, a judge sentenced Paul to a year-long probation. He also had to pay a fine and complete a program for impaired drivers. Typically, if you complete the terms of the sentence, in a case like this, the charges can be dismissed.  
Cecelia Lizotte:We all have our own dark, whatever moments that we’re living with. This guy came out and he’s like, “Okay, you know what? This is not it.” And he’s been like in therapy. He has done so much extensive things to make sure that he’s doing the right things.  
Julia Lurie:When I left the restaurant, Cecilia seemed overwhelmed but also focused. She had a mission, which was getting ready for the bond hearing. We agreed we’d check in after it was over. On the day of the hearing, I called Cecilia, no answer, no response to text either. A few days later I call again and she picks up sounding exhausted. Paul’s bond was denied. Paul’s lawyer told Cecilia that the DUIs had come up in the hearing and the judge wasn’t convinced Paul should be released.  
 So are you doing with this news?  
Cecelia Lizotte:Thank you. It’s crazy.  
Julia Lurie:How is it for you to be working? I’m imagining it would be kind of hard to be positive and stuff like that around customers.  
Cecelia Lizotte:No, no. This is very, very difficult. And I think when I met with you all, I was hopeful I was doing okay, but then as time goes on, I’m just getting more and more defeated, just very, very much getting sick mentally, emotionally. It’s becoming almost like it’s not sustainable for me to just keep operating the way I’m operating. I don’t think anybody say like, “Okay, when I’m writing a business plan included this,” so I did not include my brother being picked up by ICE in my whole entire business plan. I’m not able to operate the establishment basically because it’s crazy.  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia told me she’s having trouble sleeping. She’s crying a lot, and this sounds like a bad metaphor, but it’s actually quite literal. Cecilia, the award-winning chef, has lost her appetite.  
Cecelia Lizotte:It’s just little nibbles like cat, and I’m like, “No, this is not good.”  
Julia Lurie:One of the many things weighing on Cecilia are all of the expenses. There are the legal retainers, $2,500 for the bond hearing, $13,000 for the asylum hearing, and then there’s all the cost of living that Paul normally would’ve paid for himself.  
Cecelia Lizotte:We are now left with paying all his rent, insurance, car payment, phone bills. It adds up. It piles up.  
Julia Lurie:This may sound naive, but I never really thought about all the recurring normal life expenses that pile up when a person suddenly disappears. It’s not like when someone dies and there’s no question, you cancel their rent and their phone bill. This is different. Cecilia has to decide, does she keep paying his $1,300 rent in hopes that he comes back, or does she go clean out his apartment? And Paul, of course, hates that she’s been put in this position.  
Cecelia Lizotte:He was very, very devastated, upset with the fact that all these things that now is put on the family is something that he is strong, capable of doing what he’s been doing all this time. So he’s very much distraught.  
Julia Lurie:Ever since news broke of Paul’s arrest, donations have poured in. Within two weeks, a GoFundMe for Paul’s legal expenses raised $32,000. Sometimes customers leave little notes of support in the delivery instructions of takeout orders. Cecilia shared one with me that said to leave the order in the lobby, and then went on, quote, “I’m so disgusted to hear about Paul Dama. I’ll do anything to help. Thank you for being my comfort food for the last five years.”  
Cecelia Lizotte:We’ve been receiving a lot of support from customers that we’ve never seen before based on what they’ve heard maybe on the news or they’ve read on the newspaper just to make sure that the establishment is sustained and it’s going. But me, the owner, is breaking.  
Julia Lurie:In moments when she’s feeling down, Cecilia seriously considers abandoning the life she’s built here, closing down the restaurant, going back to Nigeria even though she’s a US citizen. Her daughters and employees hate when she talks like this. They’re holding onto her and they want her to stay strong for them. But Cecilia’s like, “I’m trying to stay strong, but without Paul, who am I holding onto?” Cecilia talks to Paul almost every day. During one of their recent calls, a friend Paul made in detention got on the phone.  
Cecelia Lizotte:Then he explained to me how Paul is almost like they call him the president. They’re like, “You are our president.” Any question they have go to Paul, anywhere for them to feel some sense of a comfort, “Go to Paul, go to Paul.” I was joking with Paul like, “You can’t leave because you have a lot of almost like followers that are looking up to you to make this whole entire thing make sense.”  
Julia Lurie:Cecilia, of course, knows exactly how they feel.  
Al Letson:That was from Mother Jones reporter, Julia Lurie. You can’t talk about the federal government’s deportation efforts without talking about Los Angeles. Trump famously activated the National Guard on LA streets, and ICE has been targeting the city for months. But a tiny LA newsroom that used to be focused mostly on tacos has been tracking ICE and fighting back.  
Speaker 5:I’ve been going through hundreds of DMs, where they’re being spotted, so be careful, mi raza, keep your bootstraps tight.  
Al Letson:That’s next on Reveal. Stay with us.    
Al Letson:From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson.  
 Today we’re telling stories of people rounded up as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Our last story takes us to Los Angeles, where since June, thousands of people have been swept up in aggressive raids. ICE and Border Patrol are raiding car washes, Home Depots, outdoor markets, places where undocumented immigrants work and hang out. Federal agents have no arrest warrants and they’re picking up random individuals.  
 Then in July  
News Anchor:A federal judge just ruling ICE and the Border Patrol must stop their aggressive tactics immediately, saying, “There is a mountain of evidence the feds are in fact breaking the law.”  
Al Letson:The judge said federal agents may not go after people based on their race or ethnicity or because they speak Spanish or work in a particular industry. That same day, Border Czar Tom Homan came on Fox News and acknowledged that that is basically what the government is doing.  
Tom Homan:They just got through their observation, get articulable facts based on their location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.  
Al Letson:For Homan it’s how agents establish “reasonable suspicion”. For the judge, it’s profiling.  
 The Trump administration appealed the judge’s order. And this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the ICE raids can continue while the appeal plays out. The Department of Homeland Security has claimed that the raids do not target Latinos and are based on “investigations”. Officials say they’re going after criminals. But according to an analysis of government data, agents arrested just over forty-three hundred people in June and July in Los Angeles. About 86% were Latino. Less than a third of the people arrested had a criminal conviction.
 People are scared and angry. They’re turning to a tiny newsroom called LA Taco for information about where ICE raids are happening. As you might’ve guessed from the name, LA Taco writes about food. But since June, it’s been using its deep roots in Los Angeles to set the record straight. And expose what ICE is doing in the communities it covers.
 Reveal’s Steven Rascón spent time with LA Taco to learn how it ended up in the trenches of what it sees as one of the biggest civil rights moments in the country’s recent history. Steven takes it from here.  
Audio:Salsa.  
 Salsa? It’ll be 50 cents.  
Steven Rascón:A cook pulls a fish filet out of the fryer, lays it over some tortillas, and tops it off with some diced tomato, then hands it to a customer.  
Audio:[Spanish 00:02:45]  
Steven Rascón:It’s lunchtime at Tacos Baja in East Los Angeles.  
Memo Torres:The go-to order here is the Baja-Style Fish Taco. I’m going to get that.  
Steven Rascón:Memo Torres knows his tacos well and so does his colleague, Javier.  
Javier Cabral:My name’s Javier Cabral. I’m the editor-in-chief of L.A. Taco.  
Steven Rascón:Javier and Memo have been reviewing places like this for years. They even won a James Beard Award for their food coverage.  
Javier Cabral:I actually grew up coming here with my parents on Wednesdays because they’re super cheap tacos. They used to be a dollar. I think right now, they’re $1.59 now, so taco inflation. That’s not bad.  
Memo Torres:That’s bad at all.  
Javier Cabral:That’s not bad. They’re not letting people inside right now, which I think is interesting.  
Steven Rascón:Tacos Baja is serving tacos but behind locked doors.  
Javier Cabral:They also have the sign, check it out.  
Memo Torres:“[Spanish 00:03:29] ICE.”  
Steven Rascón:“Everyone is welcome here, except ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”  
Javier Cabral:And it says, “Private property. No trespassing. Federal agents prohibited without a judicial warrant,” with “ICE” crossed out.  
Steven Rascón:The signs are up because this past June, ICE agents raided a local food truck called Jason’s Tacos. Jason, the owner, posted this video to Instagram after the raid. You can see the truck is empty, carne asada left sizzling on the grill.  
Jason Devora:Wow. There’s no joke, guys. They took all my employees, all of them. It’s crazy. Within like two minutes.  
Steven Rascón:Jason’s Tacos is just one of hundreds of taqueros that L.A. Taco has written about over the years. ICE was now targeting them. Javier and Memo know these people. It was personal.  
Memo Torres:Where our taqueros, our beloved taqueros are closing now because  
Steven Rascón:Memo made a video about it for L.A. Taco’s Instagram.  
Memo Torres:Folks are scared and rightly so. After, especially after seeing Jason’s Tacos, two taqueros get abducted, and four of his clients? That’s wild.  
Steven Rascón:If there ever was such a thing as a perfect crisis for L.A. Taco to be ready for, this was it. Years of reporting on local businesses had created trust and a big online following, and that trust was starting to pay off because people were now sending Memo tips about what ICE was doing.  
Memo Torres:I’ve been going through hundreds of DMs, where they’re being spotted, and it’s a pretty general theme. The theme is working Latinos, so be careful, mi raza. Keep your bootstraps tight.  
Steven Rascón:Memo was swamped with information, so the team decided that the raids should take priority over their taco coverage, and soon L.A. Taco’s Instagram became a daily journal for ICE activity across Los Angeles.  
Memo Torres:It’s June 20th and this is your Daily Memo as to what’s been going on in LA today, and boy, has it been busy. ICE has been everywhere. All right, so  
 It’s Tuesday, June 24th.  
 It’s Wednesday, June 25th and these are your ICE recaps for L.A.  
 June 27th, the 22nd straight day of the ICE siege here in Los Angeles.  
 They were at the Home Depot and a car wash in Huntington Park downtown on 6th and Grand, taking people, went back to the Walmart in Pico Rivera  
Steven Rascón:As Memo speaks, videos run behind him showing men in masks, carrying rifles, wearing tactical gear, dressed like they’re going to war. ICE is everywhere and people feel targeted.  
Video:This is the property of the church! This is Downey Memorial Christian Church and we are not okay with you being on our property. We are not okay  
Steven Rascón:Before resharing a video like this one, the first thing Memo does is find the person who shot it.  
Memo Torres:Either I or somebody on the team will reach out to them directly and be like, “Hey, hey, so we heard that they were at your taqueria. We heard that they were at the school.”  
Steven Rascón:He needs to make sure the video is accurate, and Memo gets a lot of videos.  
Memo Torres:Sometimes I have 43 different videos and pictures that I’m like, “Okay, how am I going to fit all this into a three-minute video?”  
Steven Rascón:For him, carefully documenting what’s happening in communities is a way to fight against the Trump administration’s false narrative.  
Memo Torres:They want to portray this picture as ICE being heroes and Border Patrol being heroes and out here being brave men, yet in the same light, it’s like we have to show what are they actually doing?  
 Old men are getting tackled at bus stops. They shot at a kid in a truck. They brutalized this TikToker who was recording them. You got to show the brutality, the criminalization of just people that are working, street vendors, people that are day laborers, people that are at their jobs gardening.  
Steven Rascón:We reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to ask why so many Latinos without criminal records were being targeted. We shared the numbers with them. A senior DHS official wrote back and did not dispute the data, and instead continued to claim without proof that, quote, “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, and rapists.”  
 We also asked about several incidents that were violent, and the official said, “In each case, the agent’s actions were justified.”  
 Throughout the summer, Memo keeps documenting and he’s noticing U.S. citizens are getting swept up in the raids.  
Javier Ramirez:They said that they came looking for immigrants and the only person that they got was a U.S. citizen.  
Steven Rascón:This man, Javier Ramirez, was working at a tow yard when Border Patrol agents arrested and detained him at a federal detention center, and there was Joe Garcia.  
Memo Torres:The U.S. citizen that was arrested at the Home Depot in Hollywood and then transferred  
Steven Rascón:And then transferred to the same federal detention center after he filmed a raid and told a group of men not to respond to ICE agents.  
 Around the same time, Border Patrol arrests another U.S. citizen after he tries to protest a man being detained. He spent three days in federal detention. A reporter named Aisha Wallace-Palomares discovered the story.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:I was like, “Oh my God, this is huge, a U.S. citizen detained by federal immigration agents.”  
Steven Rascón:At the time, Aisha was a freelance reporter covering the ICE protests outside the Federal Building.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:Outside of the Federal Building in Downtown, L.A.  
Steven Rascón:It’s where ICE processes the people it plans to deport.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:Because tear gas has been deployed here over the past few days and there’s still remnants of those.  
Steven Rascón:One day, she notices a family standing outside of the detention center.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:They didn’t look like protesters. They looked out of place. And I was like, “Hey, you know, what’s going on?” Being a nosy reporter. And they were like, “Our son was taken today.” And I said, “Your son was taken today? Taken by who?” And they said that he was taken by ICE and that he was a U.S. citizen.  
Steven Rascón:Aisha sticks around. She talks to the dad.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:And he said, “Yes, and I have a video of it,” and I had actually recognized the video because it had come up on my feed earlier that morning. It had gone viral already by that point because of the brutality.  
Steven Rascón:The video shows a thin 20-something-year-old, Adrian Martinez, wearing a blue Walmart vest yelling at the agents for detaining a janitor. He cleans the plaza where Adrian works. The agents tackle Adrian, grab him by the neck, throw him into a Border Patrol vehicle and take him away along with the janitor.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:And so at that point, I decided I needed to step away from them for at least a few minutes because I needed to send an Instagram DM to L.A. Taco and I was just crossing my fingers hoping that they would see it and be interested in the story.  
Steven Rascón:L.A. Taco DMs back, and by that night, Adrian’s story is on the Daily Memo.  
Memo Torres:Adrian, according to his family, is a U.S. citizen, but this is just hard to watch, guys. I mean, he’s a 20-year-old.  
Aisha Wallace-Palomares:I think within an hour or two, it was already at like 600,000 views.  
Steven Rascón:The video creates outrage online. Major news outlets are picking up the story, NBC, CNN, L.A. Times. And a few days later, Border Patrol Assistant Chief David Kim comes out with a different story on Fox News.  
David Kim:The narrative right now is just a U.S. citizen was arrested for no reason, but that subject punched two agents.  
Steven Rascón:We asked Border Patrol whether they had any proof of this because the videos Aisha and Memo looked at show that Adrian definitely confronts ICE agents, but he never throws a punch. They didn’t get back to us.  
Oscar Preciado:My name is Oscar Preciado.  
Steven Rascón:Oscar was there that day and also didn’t see Adrian throw a punch. He recorded the original video that went viral.  
Oscar Preciado:I do photography for music events and then I also do Instacart on the side. Born and raised here in East L.A.  
 So that day, I was working Instacart at the Pico Rivera Walmart, and that’s where we saw them pull up to a janitor that was out there cleaning, doing his job, and that’s where everything just got pretty crazy.  
Video:Hey! Hey! Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo!  
Steven Rascón:Oscar’s video shows Border Patrol agents driving into a parking lot. People are honking their horns at them. Two men run when they see them. One of them is the janitor.  
Video:Get out of the way. I don’t know him. Get out of the way! Get out of the way!  
 Move! Move!  
Oscar Preciado:When I turn back around recording, that’s where Adrian shows up.  
Steven Rascón:Adrian pulls up in a black sedan. He approaches a Border Patrol agent.  
Video:What the fuck? What is he doing?  
 Move! Move! Move!  
 He’s a fucking hard worker!  
 [inaudible 00:12:34]  
Steven Rascón:That’s Adrian cursing and saying, “He’s a hard worker.”  
Adrian Martinez:I felt like, “Why are they doing that? They’re mistreating him.” He’s clearly an older man.  
Steven Rascón:We interviewed Adrian about a month after he was arrested and he told us he stepped in because he felt like it was the right thing to do.  
Adrian Martinez:When I heard him say, “Get him,” I didn’t think they were going to get me because, again, I was just speaking up.  
Video:Hey, we’re taking that as motherfucking evidence! I’m giving that to-  
 Car, put him in the car!  
Steven Rascón:It’s clear from the video that Adrian isn’t the only one upset. People try to block in the agents with their cars. Oscar is trying to capture as much as he can on his phone.  
Video:I’m not doing shit! Hey, what the fuck, dude? You can’t be doing that shit!  
Adrian Martinez:The guy smacked the phone out of my hand. I picked it back up, kept recording.  
Video:It’s my civil right! I can fucking record you if I want!  
Steven Rascón:Oscar keeps recording through a cracked screen. He captures three agents restraining Adrian.  
Video:Why are you guys putting hands on homie? Look at all these little bitches.  
 [inaudible 00:13:31]  
 He’s a U.S. citizen!  
 Right here.  
Steven Rascón:Oscar and Adrian didn’t know each other, but when they saw the janitor get taken away, it felt like an injustice to both of them.  
Adrian Martinez:I feel like that’s kidnapping. You can’t just go to their job and like, “Oh, I’m taking you.” It’s not right, so.  
Oscar Preciado:You’re upset about what’s going on and what they’ve been doing to the communities and anybody that’s of color, any brown person they see.  
Steven Rascón:Since June, ICE has detained at least seven U.S. citizens. Some were let go and charges were dropped, but Adrian was indicted. Federal prosecutors are charging him with conspiracy to impede a federal officer.  
Pedro Chavez:I sympathize with Adrian.  
Steven Rascón:Pedro Chavez is an immigration lawyer. He runs an organization called Fear of Return, and he’s become a bit of a TikTok sensation for his legal advice, and he’s been following Adrian’s arrest.  
Pedro Chavez:He looked at this man that is being abducted by ICE and he probably saw his uncle or he saw his dad in that man. It’s like I can feel his emotion.  
Steven Rascón:Pedro says Adrian’s conspiracy charge is something the government has been using on people who stand up to ICE. He says federal prosecutors would have to prove that what happened at the Walmart wasn’t spontaneous but planned, and that’s a stretch.  
Pedro Chavez:Because it’s clear that they didn’t meet beforehand.  
Steven Rascón:Instead, he says they reacted in the moment and were outraged at what they saw, ICE driving around looking for someone to pick up.  
Pedro Chavez:They didn’t have arrest warrants, they didn’t have search warrants, they had nothing. It was a roving patrol and they admitted it in the complaint.  
Steven Rascón:Roving patrols are what a federal judge ordered the government to stop doing because they lead to racial profiling. But the Supreme Court has now lifted that restraining order. To Memo, ICE agents are making indiscriminate stops and violating people’s rights. 
Memo Torres:These people are masked. They don’t want to identify themselves. They’re roaming around doing whatever they want.  
Steven Rascón:He says this is what’s driving the anger across L.A.  
Memo Torres:How can you not be angered at the cruelty of it, the barbarianism of it?  
Steven Rascón:And L.A. Taco is committed to covering this story for the long haul.  
Memo Torres:L.A.’s currently very traumatized. I’ll tell you that right now. People are traumatized. These people, these immigrants, they’re not criminals. They’re our neighbors.  
Al Letson:After the ICE raids started back in June, tens of thousands of Angelenos took to the streets to express their anger. Trump deployed Marines and the National Guard to tamp down protests and even used soldiers during raids. This month, a judge ruled that it was illegal and said the president violated a federal law that bans the military from being used to do domestic policing. The Trump administration is expected to appeal the judge’s decision.  
 That story was reported and produced by Reveal’s Steven Rascón and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, with original reporting by Aisha Wallace-Palomares. Aisha will soon become a full-time reporter for L.A. Taco.  
 Our lead producer for this week’s show is Katie Mingle with help from Michael I Schiller. Brett Myers and Cynthia Rodriguez edited the show. Thanks to Susan Beatty, Priya Patel, and Lauren Markham for their help with the show, and to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.  
 Artis Curiskis is our fact-checker. Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production manager is Zulema Cobb. Score and sound designed by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando “My Man, Yo” Arruda. They had help from Claire “C Note” Mullen. Taki Telonidis is our deputy executive producer. Our executive producer is Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado Lightning.  
 Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.  
 I’m Al Letson, and remember, there is always more to the story.  

Anayansi Diaz-Cortes is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. She most notably spearheaded After Ayotzinapa, a gripping investigative series that examines the mysterious disappearance of 43 Mexican college students in 2014. The project earned her an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and was named among the New York Times’ Best Podcasts of 2022.

With a commitment to shedding light on critical issues, Anayansi’s storytelling spans a wide spectrum, from exposing wage theft and the dangers of predatory online gaming to unraveling the complexities of the criminal justice system in Mississippi and the challenges of navigating high school life amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Her distinctive approach combines emotional depth with first-person narratives, captivating audiences while unearthing consequential truths.

Michael I Schiller has worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting since 2013 as a multimedia reporter, producer, and creative director. His work spans radio, animation, visual design, and documentary film. The Dead Unknown, a video series he directed about the crisis of America’s unidentified dead, earned a national News and Documentary Emmy Award, national Edward R. Murrow Award, and national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award. His animated documentary short film The Box, about youth solitary confinement, was honored with a video journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, a San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award, and a New Orleans Film Festival special jury prize, and it was nominated for a national News and Documentary Emmy for new approaches.

Julia Lurie is a senior reporter at Mother Jones who writes about child welfare, criminal justice and addiction. She is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for young journalists and was a 2022 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post and Grist. You can reach her at jlurie@motherjones.com.

Cynthia Rodriguez is a senior radio editor for Reveal. She is an award-winning journalist who came to Reveal from New York Public Radio, where she spent nearly two decades covering everything from the city’s dramatic rise in family homelessness to police’s fatal shootings of people with mental illness.

In 2019, Rodriguez was part of Caught, a podcast that documents how the problem of mass incarceration starts with the juvenile justice system. Caught received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for outstanding journalism in the public interest. Her other award-winning stories include investigations into the deaths of construction workers during New York City's building boom and the “three-quarter house” industry – a network of independent, privately run buildings that pack vulnerable people into unsanitary, overcrowded buildings in exchange for their welfare funds.

In 2013, Rodriguez was one of 13 journalists to be selected as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where her study project was on the intersection of poverty and mental health. She is based in New York City but is originally from San Antonio, Texas, and considers both places home.

Claire Mullen worked at The Center for Investigative Reporting until September 2017. is an associate sound designer and audio engineer for Reveal. Before joining Reveal, she was an assistant producer at Radio Ambulante and worked with KALW, KQED, the Association of Independents in Radio and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She studied humanities and media studies at Scripps College.

Victoria Baranetsky is general counsel at the Center for Investigative Reporting (d/b/a Foundation for National Progress), where she advises the organization on its full range of legal activities, including counseling reporters on newsroom matters (newsgathering, libel, privacy, subpoenas), advising the C-level on business matters, and providing legal support to the board. She has litigated on various issues on behalf of the organization, including arguing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Prior to CIR, Victoria worked at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the New York Times. She also clerked on the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. She holds degrees from Columbia University, Columbia Journalism School, Harvard Law School, and Oxford University. She teaches at Berkeley Law School as an adjunct professor and is a fellow at Columbia’s Tow Center. She is barred in California, New York, and New Jersey.

Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. As a multi-instrumentalist, he contributes to the music, editing, and mixing of the weekly public radio show and podcast. He has held four O-1 visas for individuals with extraordinary abilities. His work has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, Gerald Loeb, Third Coast, and Association of Music Producers awards, as well as Emmy and Pulitzer nominations. Prior to joining Reveal, Arruda toured internationally as a DJ and taught music technology at Dubspot and ESRA International Film School. He also worked at Antfood, a creative audio studio for media and TV ads, as well as for clients such as Marvel, MasterClass, and Samsung. His credits also include NPR’s 51 Percent; WNYC’s Bad Feminist Happy Hour and its live broadcast of Orson Welles’ The Hitchhiker; Wondery’s Detective Trapp; and MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening?. Arruda releases experimental music under the alias FJAZZ and has performed with jazz, classical, and pop ensembles such as SFJazz Monday Night Band, Art&Sax quartet, Krychek, Dark Inc., and the New York Arabic Orchestra. He holds a master’s degree in film scoring and composition from NYU Steinhardt. Learn more about his work at FernandoArruda.info.

Jim Briggs III is a senior sound designer, engineer, and composer for Reveal. He joined the Center for Investigative Reporting in 2014. Jim and his team shape the sound of the weekly public radio show and podcast through original music, mixing, and editing. In a career devoted to elevating high-impact journalism, Jim’s work in radio, podcasting, and television has been recognized with Peabody, George Polk, duPont-Columbia, IRE, Gerald Loeb, and Third Coast awards, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Sound. He has lent his ears to a range of podcasts and radio programs including Marketplace, Selected Shorts, Death, Sex & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, NPR’s Ask Me Another, Radiolab, Freakonomics Radio, WNYC’s live music performance show Soundcheck, and The 7 and Field Trip from the Washington Post. His film credits include PBS’s American Experience: Walt Whitman, the 2012 Tea Party documentary Town Hall, and The Supreme Court miniseries. Before that, he worked on albums with artists such as R.E.M., Paul Simon, and Kelly Clarkson at NYC’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios. Jim is based in western Massachusetts with his family, cats, and just enough musical instruments to do some damage.

Steven Rascón is the production manager for Reveal. He has also produced the KQED podcast On Our Watch: New Folsom, a serial investigation into the death of two whistleblowers inside California’s most dangerous prison. Their reporting has aired on NPR stations such as Capital Public Radio, WHYY, and KCRW. He also helped produce the Peabody-nominated Reveal podcast series Mississippi Goddam. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Al Letson is the Peabody Award-winning host of Reveal. Born in New Jersey, he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, at age 11 and as a teenager began rapping and producing hip-hop records. By the early 1990s, he had fallen in love with the theater, becoming a local actor and playwright, and soon discovered slam poetry. His day job as a flight attendant allowed him to travel to cities around the country, where he competed in slam poetry contests while sleeping on friends’ couches. In 2000, Letson placed third in the National Poetry Slam and performed on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam, which led him to write and perform one-man shows and even introduce the 2006 NCAA Final Four on CBS.

In Letson’s travels around the country, he realized that the America he was seeing on the news was far different from the one he was experiencing up close. In 2007, he competed in the Public Radio Talent Quest, where he pitched a show called State of the Re:Union that reflected the conversations he was having throughout the US. The show ran for five seasons and won a Peabody Award in 2014. In 2015, Letson helped create and launch Reveal, the nation’s first weekly investigative radio show, which has won two duPont Awards and three Peabody Awards and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice. He has also hosted the podcast Errthang; written and developed several TV shows with major networks, including AMC+’s Moonhaven and Apple TV+’s Monarch; and is currently writing a comic for DC Comics. (He loves comics.) When he’s not working, Letson’s often looking for an impossibly difficult meal to prepare or challenging anyone to name a better album than Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides.

Zulema Cobb is an operations and audio production associate for the Center for Investigative Reporting. She is originally from Los Angeles County, where she was raised until moving to Oregon. Her interest in the wellbeing of families and children inspired her to pursue family services at the University of Oregon. Her diverse background includes banking, affordable housing, health care, and education, where she helped develop a mentoring program for students. Cobb is passionate about animals and has fostered and rescued numerous dogs and cats. She frequently volunteers at animal shelters and overseas rescue missions. In her spare time, she channels her creative energy into photography, capturing memories for friends and family. Cobb is based in Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and cat.

Artis Curiskis is an assistant producer at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was an editorial fellow at Mother Jones. Before that, he produced and reported the Peabody-nominated series The COVID Tracking Project podcast with Reveal and led data reporting efforts with The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. He was also an artist-in-residence at UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art and a Thomas J. Watson fellow. You can reach him at acuriskis@revealnews.org.