AILA Presents Jonathan Blitzer and Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker with the 2018 Media Leadership Award
| CONTACTS: | |
| George Tzamaras 202-507-7649 gtzamaras@aila.org |
Belle Woods 202-507-7675 bwoods@aila.org |
WASHINGTON, DC - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) will recognize The New Yorker's Jonathan Blitzer and Sarah Stillman with the 2018 Media Leadership Award, given to individuals whose efforts in the media most accurately depict immigration and immigrants. The award will be presented this week during AILA’s Annual Conference in San Francisco.
As a staff writer at The New Yorker, Mr. Blitzer has written about the lives of deportees in Central America, an underground school for the undocumented in Georgia, and the crisis involving unaccompanied minors on Long Island. Over the last year, he has filed more than fifty stories for the magazine and newyorker.com, where he covers immigration full time. He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2014. Mr. Blitzer won a 2017 National Award for Education Reporting, and he has twice been a finalist for a Livingston Award.
Ms. Stillman is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she covers immigration, criminal justice, and social policy. She also directs the Global Migration Project at Columbia Journalism School, where she runs a reporting team focused on immigration, refugee issues, and gender.
“No Refuge,” Ms. Stillman’s most recent New Yorker investigation, documented more than sixty cases of asylum seekers and other immigrants who were deported to their deaths from the United States. Now, with her Global Migration Project team, she is building a public, searchable database of these cases, as well as a database of refugees who have been harmed or killed while awaiting resettlement. Her team is also collecting the stories of women who feared reporting gender-based violence due to immigration enforcement concerns, including women who were harmed or killed as a result.
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The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the national association of immigration lawyers established to promote justice, advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy, advance the quality of immigration and nationality law and practice, and enhance the professional development of its members.