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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.
When Deportation Means A Death Sentence
This is one of the most disturbing, beautifully written, and heartbreaking articles I've read in the past year.
New Yorker's Sarah Stillman leads a team of reporters in an investigation into the immigrants to the United States for whom deportation back to their countries means certain death. The 60-plus cases they investigated had disturbing commonalities: in nearly all of the cases, the immigrants had warned US Border Patrol officers that being deported meant putting them in great danger, and had requested their case be reviewed. Often, their requests were denied.
Take the case of Laura, an undocumented mother-of-three from Mexico, whose ex-boyfriend beat her so badly that she was put in the hospital. He also threatened to kill her. She got a restraining order against her boyfriend, and he was eventually deported to Mexico, where he joined a cartel and continued to make death threats against her. When Laura was pulled over by police and turned over to Border Patrol, she explained that if they deported her she would be killed and begged them reexamine her case. She was deported anyway.
She's not the only one: the reporting team exposed a disturbing number of cases with similar elements. In fact, this sort of Border Patrol behavior is in violation of US immigration and asylum policy — but that doesn't keep them from doing it.
It's a read guaranteed to get your blood boiling.
