For decades, the U.S. has run private “shadow prisons” for immigrants convicted of federal crimes. Biden has ordered the government to wind down those contracts.
Author Archives: Esther Kaplan
Executive Editor
Esther Kaplan is executive editor of Reveal, leading the organization's investigative reporting. She previously was editor-in-chief of Type Investigations, where she was part of teams that won three Emmy Awards, a Polk Award, a Peabody Award and an IRE Medal. She has written for Harper's Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Nation and many other publications. She is the author of “With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right” (New Press) and was a 2013 fellow with the Alicia Patterson Foundation. Earlier in her career, Kaplan was a senior editor at The Nation; features editor at Poz, the national AIDS magazine; communications director at Communications Workers of America Local 1180; and a host of “Beyond the Pale,” a weekly radio program covering Jewish culture and politics on WBAI in New York. She began her journalism career as an assistant editor at The Village Voice, where she became a regular contributor. Her writing has won the Molly National Journalism Prize, the Sidney Award, the Clarion Award and other honors. Kaplan is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.
The evolution of all-American terrorism
Long before the attempted coup by his supporters, Trump fanned the flames of white supremacy and domestic terrorism.
United, we’re not
Where does America go from here? We talk with an asylum-seeking family, Georgia women on abortion and West Virginians on the impact of Black Lives Matter.
Remembering a White supremacist coup
Reveal looks back to a nearly forgotten 1898 election in North Carolina. A coup d’etat gave birth to much of the structural racism that exists today.
An adolescence, seized
A 10-year-old Honduran girl came to the United States seeking asylum. Instead, she was detained – away from her family – for nearly seven years.
How Amazon hid its safety crisis
Robots. Prime Day. Holiday peak. Internal records show Amazon has deceived the public on rising injury rates among its warehouse workers.
Catching Amazon in a lie
Amazon says its warehouses are safe for workers. But the numbers reveal that workers are getting hurt much more often than the company claims.
American Rehab Chapter 2: Miracle on the Beach
Reveal’s American Rehab exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce.
American Rehab Chapter 1: A Desperate Call
Penny Rawlings is relieved to finally get her brother into rehab at a place called Cenikor. She doesn’t realize that getting him out of treatment is going to be the bigger problem.
‘This is going to be a different city.’
A New York City waiter reflects on the changes COVID-19 has wrought on the city in this comic illustrated by Thi Bui.