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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
Minors Flee El Salvador For The US To Escape Gang Violence, Only To Find The Gangs Have Moved Too
This article is about the globalization of gang violence. It's also about race, and class, and how American police officers are – yet again – failing to protect a community of color from violence and harm.
For the past four years, there's been a spike in the number of unaccompanied minors coming undocumented to the US from various parts of Central America. Most come to escape the threat of gang violence in their countries of origin.
Unfortunately, upon arriving, they learn that there is no safety to be found, because the gangs have moved too. Specifically, a particularly violent gang from El Salvador called MS-13 is terrorizing immigrant communities living in Long Island. MS-13 regularly kidnaps and rapes adolescent girls. Some they murder.
But the police in Suffolk County have almost entirely ignored their responsibility to protect those who so desperately need protection. Probably, because many of the community so desperately in need of protection are undocumented. Parents who report, alarmed, that their daughters have disappeared are told that they "probably ran off with a boyfriend." In one case, a girl who was kidnapped and raped for months (and became pregnant) managed to get to a phone to call her mom. The mother quickly called the police for help, and was told to order a taxi to pick her daughter up.
In the meantime, it's the most vulnerable – adolescent Latino girls and boys – who bear the brunt of this violence, and are failed by the lack of protection.
