But what the fire reveals is broken immigration policies in the U.S. and Mexico. Mexico is detaining and holding migrants, including those expelled from the U.S. They don’t have the facilities or the resources to do this humanely.
Under U.S. immigration law, migrants fleeing persecution can request asylum regardless of how they arrive on U.S. soil. But the Biden administration proposed a more restrictive immigration rule to take effect in May.
Author Archives: Teresa Puente
Teresa Puente has spent her career reporting on immigration and Latino issues in the U.S. and has also reported extensively from Mexico. Previously, she was a staff reporter at the Chicago Tribune and was on the editorial board at the Chicago Sun-Times. Early in her career, she worked as a reporter for the Press-Telegram in Long Beach and The Orange County Register. Her recent journalistic work has been published in TIME, Newsweek, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Hill, The Miami Herald, Latino magazine, In These Times and more. Puente also is a senior facilitator, coach and mentor with The OpEd Project, a social venture that helps promote and publish underrepresented voices in the media.
Puente, an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach, teaches News Reporting and Ethics, Social Media Communication and Bilingual Magazine Reporting & Production. Her students publish the Spanish-language magazine Dig En Español, the first magazine of its kind in Long Beach.
Puente received the Studs Terkel Award from Public Narrative for her coverage of Chicago’s diverse communities. She has served on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the California Chicano News Media Association and JAWS – Journalism & Women Symposium. She is a past president of the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists.
Puente holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and a bachelor’s degree with a double major in journalism and political science from Indiana University-Bloomington. Before returning to Long Beach, she taught journalism for 10 years at Columbia College Chicago. She was also a visiting assistant professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and taught journalism and communications at the Tecnológico de Monterrey campus in Guadalajara, Mexico.
COLUMN: CALÓ NEWS elevates Latino/a/x voices
Latino voices are rarely seen in the opinion pages of mainstream media. For example, only 4% of opeds published by the Los Angeles Times featured Latino writers, according to a 2020-2021 study by the UCLA Latino Politics & Policy Initiative.
Here at CALÓ NEWS we have elevated the voices of Latino/a/x journalists but also of Latino/a/x professors, doctors, activists, community leaders and students.
COLUMN: End gender pay gap for Latinas
At the current rate Latinas won’t earn equal pay until 2197. That’s 174 years if you do the math. That means maybe your Latina granddaughter might achieve equal pay before she retires. The pay gap amounts to a loss of nearly $1.2 million over a 40-year career, according to The National Women’s Law Center.
COLUMN: Stop the Latinx bans
There is no single word that can define the entire diverse community of people of Latin American origin. We have to respect the right to choose for us to decide what we want to be called. If some people want to use the “o” the “a” the “x” or the “e,” we should let them.
COLUMN: Brown pride is not racist
Expressing Brown pride is not racist. What these youth demonstrated is pride in their culture and in themselves. It’s no different than a student who wears green, or an Irish flag, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
COLUMN: Don’t ban the term Latinx or the culture
The new governor of Alabama, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has banned the word Latinx in state government business. Republican governors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, are waging a cultural and political war against immigrants and people of color.
Wakanda Forever elevates Black and Brown superheroes
Tenoch Huerta Mejía is vocal critic of racism, colorism and supporter of Brown pride, the title of his newly released book, “Orgullo Prieto.”
COLUMN: As a college professor, I’m no longer using Twitter as a teaching tool
The future of Twitter is uncertain. Some predict it may soon fail. A few journalists have argued that Twitter should be preserved to defend democracy.
COLUMN: We can’t ignore Trump (again)
If you don’t like candidates from either party then it’s important that we put forth and support candidates who actually have values that include support for human rights, immigrant rights, workers rights, women’s rights and more.
COLUMN: Diversity and democracy win in this midterm election
The country is divided. But voters also elected some historic firsts.
COLUMN: Hate has no place on LA City Council or in our Latino Communities
Many of us in the Latino community have heard friends and family members use racist language. We also have been the victims of racist language- anti-Black, anti-Brown and anti-Indigebous – and sometimes from those within our own community.
COLUMN: When you are the first Latino/a/x
Only around 5 percent of college professors nationwide are Latino/a/x and at CSULB it’s higher around 9 percent. But this is still low when almost half of the student body is Latino/a/x.