A selection of published news features.
(Click each headline to read the full story.)

A North Carolina Farmer Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election.
Mother Jones, Oct. 7, 2022

In Reynolds American, Brent Jackson has not only found a buyer for his crop but also a generous source of funds for his political endeavors.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Mother Jones and Enlace Latino NC reveals how Reynolds American has pumped a significant amount of money into Jackson’s campaign. In fact, few lawmakers in the Tar Heel state have received more money from the company than Jackson, who has in turn used his platform to promote bills that prevent his workers speaking out against abuse. Interviews with migrant workers employed on his farm reveal why they felt compelled to speak out. The union took its concerns about Jackson’s farm directly to Reynolds American, first in 2015 and again in 2019. But, despite senior executives’ claims that the company supports the freedom of farm workers in its supply chain to unionize, Reynolds continued to buy tobacco from Jackson’s farm and to help fund his political career.

Reporters: Ben Stockton, Victoria Bouloubasis
Photographer: Cornell Watson

CHICKEN COUNTRY: As N.C. poultry plants failed to curb COVID-19, Latina workers stood in the gap

Living Downstream podcast + Southerly, Enlace Latino NC
July 9, 2021
With little to no protection from their employers or the state during the pandemic, a mother-daughter community health worker duo has helped launch and lead vaccination events in Duplin County, N.C.

This story is a multimedia piece, which includes as a podcast episode on Living Downstream. The mother and daughter lead the story in Spanish, without overdubbing. The partners who made this story possible include Northern California Public Media, Mensch Media, Southerly, and Enlace Latino NC. Additional support provided by National Geographic COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists and Solutions Journalism Network.

Farm cooperatives allow Latinos to grow and sell food on their own terms
Southerly + Enlace Latino NC, June 22, 2021

In an industry benefiting white farmers, Tierra Fértil roots a growing Latino community in Henderson County, N.C.

IGNORED AND FORGOTTEN
Each hurricane season, eastern North Carolina braces for the worst. But emergency planning, response and recovery efforts neglect a major marginalized population: rural Latinos. A bilingual series for Enlace Latino NC with support from the Investigative Editing Corps and funding by NC Local News Lab.

Before the Storm: Without emergency alerts in Spanish, Latino immigrants in rural N.C. are left out of local emergency preparedness
Enlace Latino NC, Sept 19, 2020
Without emergency alerts in their language or recovery support specific to community needs, immigrant workers and families navigate an emergency management system that fails to include them, putting their jobs and livelihoods on the line to survive a disaster and its aftermath.

Farmworkers left behind by broken labor and disaster aid systems
Enlace Latino NC/Southerly, Dec. 2, 2020
A hurricane season on top of a pandemic showed how farmworkers in North Carolina are susceptible to dangerous conditions on the job. Labor laws exclude most agricultural workers from historic worker protections, and policy reform to better protect workers remains stagnant.

Road to Recovery: After two years of systemic challenges, an immigrant family rebuilt their home destroyed by Hurricane Florence
Enlace Latino NC, Dec. 15, 2020
Natural disasters have unveiled tremendous inequities affecting how undocumented immigrants receive aid for disaster preparedness and recovery.

Heroes of the pandemic: “When the world is burning, I must put out the fire”
Univision/Enlace Latino NC, Sept. 24, 2020
At the peak of the pandemic, nearly half of positive Covid-19 cases in North Carolina were among Latinos, despite just being 9.6% of the population. In the absence of adequate state or federal support, a group of Latina doctors and activists is taking the community’s health into their own hands. This multimedia piece was produced as a collaboration with visual journalist Andrea Patiño Contreras.

Little Heart of Gold
Enlace Latino NC, June 12, 2020
The first N.C. child to die of COVID-19 is an eight-year-old with Mexican parents. Her death puts a spotlight on a crisis that state officials can no longer ignore: coronavirus is rapidly spreading through Latino communities. Latinos make up 43% of cases in N.C., but less than 10% of total population.

A small part of this story was featured as an obituary for young Yoshi on NPR’s Global Lives Lost, remembering people who have died during the pandemic.

As COVID-19 races through Mountaire Farms poultry plant, workers deemed vital feel dispensable
NC Health News / Enlace Latino NC, May 28, 2020
"I sometimes want to defend my people, but then I’ll get myself into trouble.” Workers at Mountaire Farms in Siler City say they are working elbow-to-elbow with double the product, processing 36 chickens per minute, at $11.40/hr. They say they get yelled at if they ask for a break, hearing "this is what we pay you for." A housekeeper was fired when she asked for paid time off after her husband tested positive for COVID-19.

Latinos, the coronavirus and a single zip code
NC Health News / Enlace Latino NC, May 29, 2020
Latinos comprise 35% of NC’s 24,140 confirmed COVID-19 cases but make up only 9.6% of the state’s pop. Siler City is in the zip code with the fastest growing rate of the virus; the town is 43% Latino and where ‘polleras,’ or poultry plants, have had a looming presence over working-class communities since the 1980s. State health officials still refuse to reveal how many workers are infected at Mountaire Farms and other poultry plants.

‘They didn’t tell us anything’: North Carolina poultry plant workers say Butterball isn’t protecting them from COVID-19
Southerly / Enlace Latino NC, May 1, 2020
As the virus spreads through meatpacking plants across the U.S., immigrant communities struggle to get answers from the company or state health officials about cases at a Mount Olive facility. “They just want us to work and they don’t see we exist in the same community.”

Coronavirus poses a threat to a major NC food producer: the immigrant farmworker
Enlace Latino NC / News & Observer, March 30, 2020
“Industry concerns are put above health concerns and above the lives of migrant workers. That’s worrisome because, at the end of the day, [the workers] are sustaining the food industry without any protection for themselves.”

Campus housing takes on new meaning as US considers more caps on refugee resettlement
PRI’s Global Nation, Sept. 9, 2019
On a global level, the number of people seeking refuge and asylum is at 70.8 million — an all-time high — according to the UN Refugee Agency. But a mere 7% of those seeking refuge have been resettled. While the statistics leave advocates fraught with frustration, Every Campus as a Refuge based in North Carolina sees the current crisis as an opportunity.

Months After Hurricane Florence, Undocumented Farmworkers Still Struggle to Recover
Civil Eats, Nov. 13, 2018
In North Carolina, immigrant farmworkers, a backbone of the state’s ag sector, have been hard hit by lack of access to assistance due to deportation fears.

The Hunted: Pedro Salmeron Was Deported From North Carolina in 2016. We Went to El Salvador to See What His Life’s Like Now.
INDY Week, Feb. 28, 2018
Each year, at least 20,000 migrants vanish and presumably die on the journey to the United States. Pedro Salmeron was among those who made it, fleeing gang violence in El Salvador to join his parents in North Carolina. But just three years later, the teenager was deported back to one of the most violent countries in the world. (Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation.)

Salvadoran Women Imprisoned for Abortion Speak Out Against Their Country's Draconian Laws
Jezebel, May 2, 2018
A stillbirth, miscarriage, or loss of the fetus is still considered an abortion under Salvadoran federal law. The maximum sentence for an abortion conviction is 12 years in prison, but many women face a charge of aggravated homicide, which carries a sentence that ranges from 30 to 40 years. “In jail, the other women would say, ‘You killed your baby.’ You are treated like a dog.” (Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women's Media Foundation.)

Home of the Brave: A Teen's Detention Sparked a Community Into Action, But He’s Still Not Free 
INDY Week, March 22, 2017
Wildin Acosta's deportation case sparked urgency in this progressive community he'd called home for three years, marked by confusion about how a teenager who fit so neatly into the American obsession with meritocracy would be treated like a delinquent.

#Caravana 43 in North Carolina: How the Ayotzinapa case is sparking a movement in the South
Guernica Magazine, May 27, 2015
Mexican immigrants swim in limbo between two countries, in a sea of parallels. They are tired of the politics entangling the lives of the most vulnerable on both sides of the border. These voices are indicative of a changing South and a civil rights movement not yet laid to rest.
(Text & audio by Victoria Bouloubasis. Video & editing by Andrea Patiño Contreras. Original version debuted as a series of Instagram essays.)

Dead or imprisoned for having an abortion: fighting El Salvador's brutal laws (video)
The Guardian, Oct. 25, 2017
El Salvador is on the brink of change as citizens and policy makers challenge the draconian abortion law. (Monica Wise and I shot this footage for The Guardian while on our IWMF reporting fellowship.)

Lost and Found: A Safe Space for the Triangle’s Growing Transgender Latina Population
INDY Week, Sept. 21, 2016
For uninsured immigrants, the majority of whom lack legal status, a medical transition hasn't always been so simple—or safe. Medical care for transgender immigrants is a recent phenomenon in the South.

Slave Wages: The Durham Jail Classifies Inmate Kitchen Workers as Volunteers
INDY Week, Sept. 14, 2016
Unlike in state prisons, where the average inmate's daily wage hovers around $4.73, the workers in the county jail do not manufacture any material goods and don't receive any remuneration. 

Twelve-year-old tobacco farmers: the hidden battle against US child labor
The Guardian, May 15, 2014
Brazil and India have banned child labor in their tobacco fields, but the Human Rights Watch reports that children as young as 12 are doing dangerous work in American fields.

Be Our Guest Worker
The American Prospect, Nov. 7, 2013
A look at the uncertain existence of the legal migrant farmworkers that the agricultural industry relies on for cheap labor.

Growing Home
INDY Week, May 16, 2012
3rd place Multimedia Award - 2012 Association of Food Journalists
Karen refugees rebuild their lives on a farm in North Carolina, while simultaneously learning how to hold an American hamburger.
(Text by Victoria Bouloubasis. Photos by D.L. Anderson.)

New Starts 
INDY Week, Oct. 30, 2013
"There's a twinge in your gut saying, 'I'm still not worthy.' The only way to survive [in prison] is to shut your emotions off. You come home and you're dead inside." Benevolence Farm is connecting female ex-convicts with the land. 

Report details plight of North Carolina's tobacco workers
INDY Week, Nov. 9, 2011
A stagnant breeze on a humid July evening in Wilson County nudges plush rows of tobacco leaves. Farmworkers who squat and bend to pick those leaves in the peak of summer heat sit wearily on makeshift stoops. They live in units made of concrete and covered in peeling paint. From afar, these homes can be mistaken for animal stables.

Who's picking your food?
INDY Week, March 28, 2012
Photo exhibit shows a hidden labor force: N.C.'s child farmworkers.

An Oasis in a Food Desert
INDY Week, May 19, 2010
That communities like East Durham exist in what researchers have dubbed "food deserts" is nothing new. What is new is that researchers and policymakers are beginning to connect these food deserts with the pervasive problems of hunger and obesity that afflict the poor.