Is it possible for a subject to be ubiquitously covered — and inadequately explained? That paradox lies at the heart of a project launched by ProPublica seven months before the 2024 election. Immigration was at the white-hot center of a contentious campaign, and polls showed voters turning against immigrants. Press coverage often calcified into tropes: Images of caravans of foreigners surging toward the border dominated right-leaning media, while stories about families struggling to find a better life predominated in liberal outlets. ProPublica’s goal was to explain what was driving voters’ anxieties over immigration and what was at stake in the upcoming election without succumbing to the view of either political party.
ProPublica approached that paradoxical mission — trying to explain an issue most voters thought they already understood — in trademark fashion: We gathered and analyzed new sources of data to look for information that would allow us to explain how patterns of migration had changed. And we deployed reporters across the country to show how those changes were playing out on the ground. There is power and insight in every story, but taken together they provide a portrait of the country at a historic inflection point. ProPublica spotlighted regular folks caught in the maelstrom and tied the stories together with data that revealed what’s new in the recent immigration wave and what isn’t.
Those regular people included a sheriff in the border town of Del Rio, Texas, and a police chief 1,400 miles away, in Whitewater, Wisconsin, who was coping with an influx of Nicaraguans. They included a veteran farmer in Belle Glade, Florida, who’d hired undocumented workers in the past but when he became a state legislator voted for a harsh anti-immigrant law. ProPublica didn’t focus just on the powerful; we zeroed in on homeless people in Denver affected by a wave of Venezuelan arrivals. We spent months in Houma, Louisiana, where undocumented workers construct ships for the Navy, with fatal consequences for one Guatemalan immigrant. “The New Immigration” series used pointillistic human detail and authoritative data to explain a profound shift in America, presaging the results on Election Day.
