Caitlin Dickerson

The changes rocking American immigration policy right now will reshape this country for generations to come. They will reverberate across the globe. To help us understand what is at play, and what is at stake, there is Atlantic staff writer Caitlin Dickerson. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for her powerful cover story, “‘We Need to Take Away Children.’” This exhaustive investigation, one of the longest articles in The Atlantic‘s history, exposed the secret history of the Trump administration’s policy to intentionally separate migrant children from their parents: how it came into being, who was responsible, and how its worst outcomes were anticipated and ignored. The Pulitzer Committee calls her writing “deeply reported and compelling.”

Prior to this, she covered immigration for The New York Times, where she also wrote for The New York Times Magazine, guest-hosted The Daily, and starred in a TV commercial about her investigative work that aired during the Super Bowl. In talks, Dickerson shares behind-the-scenes stories and helps audiences grasp what the ongoing changes mean, as well as how they may shape the future of this country. From tracking down the youngest child to be separated from his parents at the southwest border, to exposing the truth about conditions inside detention facilities where hundreds of children were being housed without access to adequate food or the ability to bathe, to new political and policy developments, she has a front row seat to this unprecedented generational change.

For a series on The Daily, Dickerson dove into major elements of the family separation story that she brought to light, including that thousands had occurred before the US government admitted to the practice, and that border agents destroyed records that could have been used to track down families after they were torn apart. She has also appeared on Fresh Air to discuss stories she’s broken around conditions inside migrant detention facilities. Dickerson also appears on CNN as a policy analyst. She is the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award, and won a Peabody Award for her investigative work on veterans issues, which led to the passage of a new law. She’s also won two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists.