We are thrilled to announce that Aura Bogado, a senior reporter and producer for The Center for Investigative Reporting, has been named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Each year, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program recognizes a select group of extraordinary scholars and writers who receive philanthropic support for scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that addresses important and enduring issues our society is confronting. Bogado is one of two journalists being honored in the 2022 program of a total class of 28, selected from nearly 300 nominations.
Through this fellowship, Bogado will focus on a book-length project that expands on her reporting about migrant children, which she has undertaken at CIR over the last several years. The fellowship provides up to $200,000 in funding for this work. Bogado joined CIR in 2018 to investigate how migrant children are treated in U.S. custody, uncovering abuse, neglect and misdeeds in government-funded holding centers and shelters. Her reporting has been cited by policy experts, lawmakers, advocates, immigration lawyers and major media outlets across the globe and has directly resulted in new laws and policy changes related to the treatment of migrant children.
Bogado has been honored with numerous prestigious awards, including the Hillman Foundation Prize for Web Journalism, the Investigative Reporters & Editors 2020 FOI Award and an Edward R. Murrow Award, among others. She was a finalist for the National Magazine Award and an Emmy nominee. Bogado is also a 2021 data fellow at the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.
Bogado has set herself apart by telling stories through the perspectives of the migrants who experience the consequences of U.S. policy. She’s combined her unique and exclusive access to immigrant communities with the documents, data and accountability that are the hallmark of great investigative reporting. Significantly, her reporting is also grounded in the idea that families who have experienced the harms of immigration policies are experts in their own experience – and have detailed, revelatory insights to offer on the abuses of this nation’s system of immigrant detention.
Sumi Aggarwal, CIR’s editor in chief, told me: “Aura is the kind of reporter every editor wants: passionate, thorough and fearless. Her work is an example of the best kind of investigative journalism – one that focuses on impacted communities, honors their experiences and uses that to investigate and illustrate wrongdoing.”
Over the last several years, Bogado’s work has had a significant impact in informing the public about immigration, as well as spurring needed reforms, including congressional calls for investigations into abuse at detention facilities where children are being held, judicial orders to stop harmful practices like drugging children without parental consent and the closure of an unlicensed facility in Phoenix where children were being held in violation of federal contracts. Bogado has consistently broken stories that demonstrate that the government does not always follow its own rules about detaining migrant children and has forced greater scrutiny of how migrant children are treated while in U.S. custody.
On behalf of the leadership team at CIR, I am so honored to congratulate Aura on this fellowship.