Jonathan Blitzer

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer

Last Thursday afternoon, the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, stood smiling in a hallway of the Capitol as he deflected reporters’ questions about the week’s most recent outrage. A few hours earlier, in Los Angeles, Alex Padilla, the senior Democratic senator from California, had interrupted a press conference held by Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, then was thrown to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents.

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer

In 2011, as a photography student in Barcelona, Corzo began to research the kidnapping for his thesis. At home, the topic had assumed the protean quality of forbidden family lore. For the first time, he listened to the recording of a phone call that Juan had made to his family when he was released; at the time, they had gathered at Corzo’s grandfather’s house while negotiating payments with the kidnappers. “It broke me down,” Corzo said.

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Jonathan Blitzer

The chaos of Donald Trump’s Presidency often obscures its rank consistency. Only a few hours into his second term, Trump signed an executive order suspending the admission of refugees to the United States, something that he’d tried to do his first time in office. Twelve thousand people who had been cleared to come were stranded, their flights cancelled. A hundred and eighteen thousand others had been approved but didn’t yet have plane tickets.

3 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Jonathan Blitzer

The President’s interest in the plight of Afrikaners seems to have begun with—what else?—segments on Fox News. The chaos of Donald Trump’s Presidency often obscures its rank consistency. Only a few hours into his second term, Trump signed an executive order suspending the admission of refugees to …

1 month ago | rsn.org | Jonathan Blitzer

Even as the Administration refuses to reveal the names of those it has deported under the Alien Enemies Act, a network of lawyers and advocates is fighting to keep their cases alive. Pedro Escobar Blanco, one of two hundred and thirty-eight Venezuelans deported by the Trump Administration to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador on March 15th, never met the lawyer who is representing him in U.S. immigration court. They haven’t spoken by phone or texted or communicated through an intermediary.