Since January 2019, nearly 68,000 asylum seekers have been ordered to wait in Mexico as their cases make their way through the U.S. courts system. The wait can take years, and it can often be deadly. After Mexico boasted its highest number of deportations ever in 2019, a group of local researchers and advocates set out to document just how extensive the cooperation has become between the U.S. and Mexico. The study concluded that Mexico violated its guaranteed constitutional protections when, under the Trump administration, the country mirrored its immigration policies after those of the U.S. In this episode of Latino USA, Maria Hinojosa talks to Alicia Moncada and Gretchen Kuhner about their findings and why President Biden should prioritize reform of the U.S. asylum in his first 100 days of office.

Goya Foods was has been on the spotlight after its CEO Robert Unanue expressed his support for former president Donald Trump. Calls for boycotts flooded social media over the summer. But that wasn’t the first time the food giant got caught in political turmoil. From labor disputes with its Latino workers trying to unionize in Miami to the Puerto Rican community in New York, three boycotts tell a “not-so-rosy” story about Goya. In this episode of Latino USA, we look into how Goya became a badge of identity for Latinos in the US, and why these boycotts were about much more than a can of beans.

This past November, Latino voters helped Joe Biden win the Presidency. He had made a long list of commitments to Latinx communities, from investing in healthcare and education and creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants to cleaning up pollution in communities of color. Now, on the eve of Biden’s inauguration, Latino USA speaks with young Latinxs across the country whose lives would be directly impacted by these commitments.

Maria Garcia can still remember the first time she saw Selena Quintanilla on TV: red lips, brown skin, big hoops. Maria was just 7 years old, new to the United States, and figuring out how to belong. For her and so many others, it was nothing short of a revolution, to see a Mexican-American woman, with working class roots, take pride in who she was, and have the world love her for it. And then, suddenly, on March 31st of 1995, Selena was gone.

A quarter century later, Journalist Maria Garcia investigates Selena’s legacy and what Selena can tell us about race, class, body politics, and Latinx identity. This is the first episode of a new podcast called Anything For Selena — a collaboration between WBUR and Futuro Studios, available wherever you can find podcasts.

In 1998, JJ Velazquez was sentenced to life for the murder of a police officer in Harlem, New York. The twenty-one-year-old father had an alibi that day, yet was placed in a lineup and identified as the shooter. Since then, identifying witnesses have recanted their testimony that JJ was the shooter and there is no evidence placing JJ at the scene. In fact, new evidence points away from JJ. The real killer is still out there and JJ has been in prison for over 20 years.

Christmas and the holiday season are usually a time for Latinos and Latinas to gather together and celebrate, but COVID-19 has turned those holiday celebrations upside down. Yet for many people in the Latino community, spending the holidays away from family is not new. In this episode of Latino USA we hear from Latinos and Latinas who are used to not being able to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones, and we learn some tips on how to cope with these socially distant holidays.