Mission Local was the first San Francisco news site in early 2025 to jump on the arrests taking place at San Francisco’s immigration court. What’s remarkable is that we managed to do much of the first-rate reporting with one data reporter, two interns and a former staffer who happened to be living in Mexico.
Small teams can move quickly, and that’s what we did. During the period of this contest, we published dozens of stories looking at the immigrants, the legal maneuverings, and the Trump Administration’s seemingly random efforts to deport as many immigrants as possible.
It became clear early on that immigrants were making decisions based on panic – and even then, nothing about their departure was orderly, we reported in July.
When Berkeley researchers chased down data tallying the number of arrests in the San Francisco Bay Area, the numbers were widely reported. But we took a different look. Our data reporter noticed that each arrested individual had an identifying number and we could track that person’s journey from arrest to deportation. To make the numbers come alive, we used scrollies and visualizations. But we also found immigrants who had experienced different legs of the journey and included them in a narrative that pulled readers through the numbers. 2,123 lives: Inside the stats and stories of those arrested by ICE from the S.F. area.
A former staffer happened to be living in Mexico and she tracked down one of the impacted immigrants to follow his story. It is one that we are updating as his court case proceeds.
The number of stories and the complicated legal maneuverings became overwhelming so in September, we created an illustrated timeline of highlights and we updated it again in December.
When the Berkeley researchers reported more data in March, we were the only local news site to write the story behind the numbers – that half of those arrested had been arrested behind closed doors.
