It’s been a real honor to have written over 500 issues of Documented’s Early Arrival newsletter over nearly four years.
The first edition of Early Arrival I wrote hit readers’ inboxes on December 1, 2021, leading with a story on “How the Taxi Medallion Crisis Impacted Immigrants.” That piece focused on how Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration finally agreed to a taxi medallion debt restructuring plan, resolving a decades-long crisis for New York City’s taxi workers.
Rereading that Early Arrival edition today feels like a prime example of how sustained, organized action can lead to meaningful reform. That story also reflects the potential for hope and progress through collective efforts, which I find particularly relevant to the state of U.S. immigration today.
My experience of being an immigrant in the U.S. also helped me to connect to readers of Early Arrival as a community. I moved from Nigeria to the U.S. in December 2020, reconnecting with family and visiting Disney World within my first two weeks. I had never lived outside my home country, and only traveled outside once to Dubai for five days as a tourist at 15 years old. But when living in the U.S., my initial joy turned to sadness and homesickness as I navigated a new reality.
Over the past four and half years, I have borne witness to the transition of two presidential administrations up close and the rolling crises they oversaw, from the busing of migrants from the southern border to the immigration court arrests happening now.
When I first began this job, I was learning as an immigrant myself who knew nothing about the modus operandi of the U.S. government. I also started to understand my complex identity as Black, Nigerian, African, woman, Christian, and a visual and textual learner. I did this in a newsroom composed mostly of immigrants and that focuses on reporting about, for, and with immigrant communities.
Immigration has not stopped being a defining part of U.S. politics. As I wrote in the Early Arrival edition about the 2024 DNC, immigration is the basis on which many successful politicians have won and lost elections. Over those years, politicians and parties have flip flopped on how far they will go to protect immigrant communities. I highlighted when left-leaning politicians changed their rhetoric to become right-leaning for political reasons. I showed when politicians executed policies without centering the human impact. I dissected the news — speeches, debates, court cases, court hearings and more — to show absolute fallacies and completely misleading information.
It has been fulfilling to know that Early Arrival is read by lawmakers in city council and the U.S. House and Senate. Immigration lawyers, nonprofit leaders, advocates, and government employees — city, state and federal — also rely on Early Arrival for news. We even have some readers in law enforcement.
They read the newsletter, not only to catch up and understand the news in New York and the U.S. at large, but also to understand the human impact of immigration policies and enforcement. It was my job to show them how people are being impacted in the real world.
Early Arrival has also been an avenue for people who work directly with immigrants or care about the immigrant communities they represent, to know how best to serve their clients and constituents. Working with the team of community correspondents in Documented’s newsroom, I featured original and responsive reporting we published in our Spanish, Chinese, and Caribbean verticals in Early Arrival, too. I valued the space to honor immigrant residents of New York City in our Our City column as well.
I’ve learned — story after story, source after source, interview after interview — that addressing migration in the U.S. demands a long-term strategy, which neither administration put forward. This issue is not a four-year talking point.
With every new administration, existing plans are often scrapped for new ones. Today’s policy changes — the cancellation of TPS, the overhaul of CBP One App, the expansion of the DHS surveillance system, among other things — emphasize how continuity is rare and the human impact of policy changes is often not considered by those in government. Short-term political wins take priority over structural change. As this happens, government officials continue to use human beings of varying ethnicities, nationalities, religions, gender identities, and sexual orientations as political pawns to score points.
Immigration reform will and should always be a part of any meaningful plan to make America better for all, but it is only part of a bigger puzzle. Nevertheless, we beat on ceaselessly, boats against the current, hopefully toward change.
This article was featured in Documented’s Early Arrival newsletter. You can subscribe to receive it in your inbox three times per week here.
