Download issue (PDF) - Nieman Foundation - Harvard University

INS Coverage
daily developments, as the newspaper
did leading up to the departure of
Oregon’s INS director. But in her quest
to improve our regional newspaper,
Sandy Rowe, the paper’s editor, set no
geographic limits on our reporting of
this story. By the time the state’s top
INS official announced in September
2000 that he would quit, Amanda
Bennett, then managing editor in
charge of projects, had launched us on
a full probe of INS practices. We asked
two investigative reporters, Kim
Christensen and Brent Walth, to join
us in reporting this story
from a national perspective.
With four reporters now
on board, we met with
Bennett and Managing Editor
Jack Hart to plan how
we’d go about telling this
story. Potential topics
seemed vast and amorphous.
Journalists we admired,
notably then-New
York Times columnist Anthony
Lewis [see his story
on page 25] had long reported
and written eloquently
on the INS. And we
didn’t want to do the predictable
“on the border”
story about the agency.
We shared what we’d
learned so far and agreed
on the question that would
ground our investigation:
How does the INS treat
people? [See Nieman Reports, Summer
2002, Watchdog Journalism Project
for more details about how the reporters
and editors arrived at this point.]
Organizing the Investigation
After extensive reporting that built on
our daily coverage, we broke our subjects
into categories, such as bungling,
corruption, secret prisons, and internal
agency culture. We stated—for our
own use—the strongest conclusion that
we thought we could prove in each
area. For example:
• The INS runs a secret, abusive prison
system.
• The INS has fostered corruption in
its ranks.
• The INS wrecks families.
• The INS has created an internal culture
that has tolerated racism and
abuse.
Then, during a later meeting, the
four of us projected these statements
onto a conference room screen. We
treated each finding as a work in
progress. Even though we anticipated
that additional reporting would bear
them out, we were resolved to search
as well for contradictory evidence. In
Chinese businesswoman Guo Liming describes being jailed for two
nights and strip-searched by immigration officials in Portland,
Oregon, who thought her passport was doctored. Guo and Hsieh
Tsuhi, right, her fiancé and business partner, resumed their trip.
Photo by Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian.
biased or inexperienced hands, driving
toward conclusions in this fashion
would be irresponsible. But we set
rigorous standards of proof and basic
rules of the road:
• We would publish only on-therecord
material from primary
sources, not from interest groups.
• We would find at least three examples
for every point.
• We would focus on U.S. regions away
from the borders where abuse would
seem more likely.
• We would gather political opinion
from both Republicans and Democrats,
also by interviewing former
INS officials from as many administrations
as possible.
• We would compile clear statistical
evidence.
• We would challenge each example
and fact.
• We would probe the agency’s conduct,
not the immigration issue as a
whole.
• If, by the publication date in December,
we fell short of any conclusion,
we would back down to a statement
that reflected our findings.
Our reporting team came to this
project with diverse experience, ranging
from stints in The
Oregonian’s Washington,
D.C. and Tokyo bureaus to
writing books and breaking
national investigative
stories. Each of us gravitated
toward the one or two
topics we chose and led the
writing on those subjects.
Brent Walth kept us organized.
Julie Sullivan fought
the temptation to continue
breaking daily stories. Kim
Christensen wove the findings
into a powerful lead
story. Working on a tight
deadline, we shared all that
we found, learned from one
another, and never had time
to squabble.
As we reported the story,
we assigned each category
a jointly accessible file in
the newsroom computer
system. Each of us poured notes, documents,
Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) requests, and leads into these
files. Periodically, we met to assess
what we had, and what we needed, in
each area.
I focused on the internal culture of
the INS, and my reporting uncovered a
world of racism, sexism and questionable
conduct. Portland officers jokingly
tossed condoms into mailboxes of colleagues
who were preparing to escort
deportees abroad. This practice
stopped only when their supervisor
warned them that hiring prostitutes
during work trips was unprofessional.
A Cuban-American man described
Anglo managers, who froze him out of
an entry-level Vermont border-inspec-
28 Nieman Reports / Winter 2002