immigrant rights | Vermont Conversation

“I don’t use the word ‘illegals’ to refer to human beings,” says Maria Hinojosa, a trailblazing Emmy Award-winning journalist who has been among the first Latina reporters at PBS, CBS, CNN, and NPR. “We have to actively get those voices out of our head, …break down that narrative and be active in creating a new one.” Hinojosa hosts the nationally syndicated radio show LatinoUSA on NPR and founded Futuro Media, a nonprofit newsroom which focuses on news from a POC perspective. Her new book is Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, in which she tells her own story of nearly being taken from her family when they came legally into the US in the early 1960s. Her personal experience informs her reporting on immigration, family separation and the human rights crisis on our borders.

More than 8,000 Vemonters are under some form of correctional control. One in four people incarcerated in Vermont have not been convicted of a crime. A new bipartisan consensus is emerging for criminal justice reform. A poll released this week by the ACLU of Vermont shows that two in three Vermonters want to reduce the prison population by investing in community-based alternatives, and four in five Vermonters support alternatives for offenses resulting from substance misuse, mental health conditions and poverty. James Lyall discusses efforts to cut Vermont’s prison population in half, other criminal justice reform legislation, as well as recent court decisions around immigrant rights. He also talks about his greatest concerns about civil liberties in the Trump era. (January 29, 2020 broadcast)

James Lyall, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont