Leslie Berestein Rojas Immigration and Emerging Communities Reporter
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Leslie Berestein Rojas is KPCC's Immigration and Emerging Communities Reporter.
An award-winning journalist with several years’ experience reporting on immigration issues, Berestein Rojas most recently covered immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She has retraced the steps of migrants along desert smuggling trails, investigated immigrant detention contractors, and told the stories of families left behind in Mexico’s migrant-sending towns.
A native of Cuba raised in Los Angeles, Leslie has also written for Time, People, the Orange County Register and the Los Angeles Times. She has reported from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Stories by Leslie Berestein Rojas
Does having an accent affect how people perceive you?
The case of an Arizona city council candidate who is challenging a court decision to strike her name from the ballot due to her English proficiency has revived the English-as-official-language debate, and it's raised other discussions as well.
What is an upscale Latino? Read a new report - or take a look around
Just what is an upscale Latino? Take a drive through some of the manicured suburban neighborhoods of Downey, Whittier, West Covina or parts of Glendale to get an idea. Or you can read a new report put together by Packaged Facts titled "Upscale Latino Consumers in the U.
In the news this morning: Economic recovery is favoring Latinos, racial insensitivity charged in Super Bowl ad, a migrant boat sinks, more
Opinion: Can GOP ever win Latino vote? - Politico From the piece: "Many Latinos are culturally conservative, patriotic and remarkably entrepreneurial. On paper, this sounds like fertile territory for the GOP.
Posts of the week: The long-term effects of NSEERS, 20-plus year waits for immigrant visas, how parents in deportation lose their kids, more
As usual on Multi-American this week, there's been plenty to read. We've followed a deportation case stemming from a now defunct post-9/11 national security program, attempted to make larger sense of Florida's so-called "Latino Primary" and taken a look at how long it takes for some immigrants to come to the U.
Five new Asian languages, three spoken in India, added for L.A. County voters
How many languages do L.A. County voters have access to information in? Wild guess?
'TRUST Act 2.0' would limit local cops' cooperation with Secure Communities
In August, after the federal government rescinded state contracts related to the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program, those states that at the time were trying to opt out of the controversial fingerprint-sharing program seemed to have little choice but to comply.
What about the kids? What can happen when parents are deported
Several years ago in San Diego, I met a family of three children whose parents had been deported after losing their bid to become legal residents. The kids had, technically, been left in the care of a relative who lived nearby.
In the news this morning: Human smugglers who targeted black drivers, Democrats and the Dream Act, the mistakenly deported Texas teen, more
Smugglers allegedly used black drivers to avert suspicion at border - Los Angeles Times Five people have been arrested after trying to "cash in on racial profiling by operating a human smuggling ring that hired mostly African American drivers who didn't speak a word of Spanish.
'Latino America' is a hard thing to define, but here's a shot at it
As luck would have it, a founding member of San Diego's respected Taco Shop Poets happens to be one of my colleagues, and he's still writing brilliant stuff. KPCC reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez provided a poetic introduction to a panel he moderated last week at the station called "The State of Latino America," an America so broad and diverse that it resists definition.
Does English immersion leave some children of immigrants in 'linguistic isolation?'
A Fronteras Project piece on KPCC today follows a Los Angeles first grader who speaks English, Spanish, and Kanjobal, a Mayan language - but doesn't speak any of them well.
By the numbers: U.S. leads in total number of immigrants, but not in total share
The Migration Policy Institute's MPI Data Hub has put up some freshly updated stats, with several charts on the site providing good perspective on migration to the U.S. and around the world.
In the news this morning: Western Latinos a bigger challenge for GOP candidates, some new mosques in U.S. abandoning minarets, more
As Republicans shift west, attracting Latinos a challenge - San Jose Mercury News Attracting Latino voters in states like in Nevada, where GOP presidential candidates are campaigning now, will be more difficult than in Florida.
Study: In low income 'food deserts,' the kind and size of food stores matters
As Michelle Obama was promoting grocery store access in Inglewood today, the University of Southern California released a report illustrating just where it is that large supermarkets are most lacking in several large metro areas, including L.
The original 'self-deportationist' finally gets his due
Almost as soon as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney uttered the term "self-deportation" during the first Florida debate last week, @DanielDPortado tweeted "I invented Self Deportation, please remember this on your way out.
Who had the longest wait for an immigrant visa this month?
The line for many immigrants hoping to enter the United States legally remains, as ever, a very long one. So now that the U.S. State Department has posted whose turn is up this month to receive an immigrant visa, let's take a look once more at who has been waiting the longest.
