Transcript for Hannah Dreier, Iván Valencia and Gregory Bull: To the Border and Beyond

A quick warning: this episode includes disturbing content. Please take care while listening.

Host, Nicole Carroll: This is the Pulitzer on the Road Podcast connecting Pulitzer Prize winners with audiences around the country. I'm your guide, Nicole Carroll. I’m a member of the Pulitzer Prize board and a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Each spring 23 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded for distinguished journalism, books, drama and music. On this podcast, we talk with some of the winners and hear the stories behind their prize-winning work.

Nicole Carroll: Since the birth of the United States, immigration has been fought over and politicized. As leaders have come and gone, immigration policy at times has been more lenient… and at other times much more strict. The prize-winning journalists featured in this episode did all of their reporting during the Biden administration, when – broadly speaking – much of the immigration focus was on lifting restrictions from the first Trump presidency. Now, migrants are facing a very different reality in America. One where the border is becoming increasingly militarized – and undocumented immigrants are more vulnerable to deportation. The three journalists we speak to in this episode each focused on the incredibly difficult journeys migrants have taken to achieve their American dream; the challenges they faced when they reached the border; and the long, confusing process that came after – a process that has often left many migrants, especially children, exploited and traumatized after finally entering the U.S. At the end of this episode, we’ll be returning to one of these journalists to hear from him on how things have changed for the people in his photos – and what it’s been like to cover this beat under the new administration.

Nicole Carroll: But first, we’re going to begin this episode in 2023 with Iván Valencia.

Iván Valencia: I’m Iván Valencia. I'm from Colombia and I'm a freelance photojournalist.

Nicole Carroll: The 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography was awarded to the Associated Press – the AP – for a series that chronicled the journeys made by migrants from South America to the United States. Iván Valencia had four photos in that winning submission. To take those photos, Iván traveled alongside migrants crossing the Darien Gap.

Iván Valencia: The Darien Gap is a whole jungle area between Colombia and Panama, so most of the migrants have to take that route to reach the United States.

Nicole Carroll: Iván says that it used to be mostly Venezuelans crossing the gap. But more recently, he’s seen people from all over the world.

Iván Valencia: Most of the migrants are from Venezuela, Haitians, even Chinese and Afghan people who want to reach the United States.

Nicole Carroll: In 2023, the Biden administration softened some of the harsher immigration policies enacted during the first Trump presidency. That year, hundreds of thousands of migrants from around the world made the difficult trek through the Darien Gap towards the U.S./Mexico border.

Nicole Carroll: I'm looking at your pictures. It's hilly, it's muddy, it's wet. So tell me about, in your own words, what it's like to walk through there.

Iván Valencia: So it’s a big jungle area with a lot of humidity. And a lot of dangerous things surrounding the area, like wildlife, animals. There are, like, wildlife, snakes, poisonous snakes or tarantulas or spiders. Whatever you have to find there it’s really dangerous for them.

Nicole Carroll: How long is this part of the journey? 

Iván Valencia: Well, that depends – the people, no. Sort of. ‘Cause sometimes old people are walking, sick, people are walking. And that depends [on] each person but in a normal walk, constantly walking is like three to four or five days walking to cross the Darien Gap. You have to have to to get some light stuffs with you. Like just one camera or something because it’s really hard [to] travel and you have to cross the rivers, the, well, the humidity, all of that is really dangerous for the migrants and even for us because the jungle is unpredictable. Each day change a lot. The weather. The river go high and all of that so you have to prepare for all of that.

Nicole Carroll: One of Iván’s photos that really stood out to me shows a group of people – many of them children – resting (some of them are sitting on top of backpacks). They’re beneath a tree draped in Venezuelan flags and religious symbols. The sign on the tree says “Frontera, Panama Colombia.” Frontera means border.

Iván Valencia: All of them are from Venezuela. We can find some Catholic image like Jesus Christ or things like [the] rosary or something that a lot of Catholic things to motivate this migrant because [these] kind of migrants are really religious people. And always they are trying to pray during their journey. So that's means a lot for them.

Nicole Carroll: Iván says that it's not just the wild animals or the river-crossings or the mudslides that threaten migrants along the journey. They're also preyed upon by their fellow humans, often looking to exploit them. coyotes promise to help smuggle them across borders for a price, and sometimes even abandon them once they've been paid.

At the spot in Colombia where many migrants enter the Gap, a kind of fake check-in station has been set up, and migrants are charged for "entry" and given a meaningless wrist band.

Iván Valencia: It's, like, to get the main entrance, like for any kind of park.

Nicole Carroll: Right.

Iván Valencia: But yes, like to control mostly for how many people are crossing in that moment.

Nicole Carroll: And is that an official government or is that a small business that has popped up?

Iván Valencia: Small business, like, illegal small business.

Nicole Carroll: Business? And then also there's markets.

Iván Valencia: Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: Tell me about the markets.

Iván Valencia: Well, in the middle of the jungle, a lot of hours walking there. You can find mini-markets inside of the jungle. So it's really, really interesting because they have a lot of food there, like a lot of a original brands there where they like Coke, like whatever you want there and but the price is really expensive to get some food there.

Nicole Carroll: To get through the Darien Gap, Iván hired a fixer. It’s common for a journalist to hire a fixer. That’s usually a local person who helps them navigate unfamiliar places. And Iván did other things to prepare, too.

Nicole Carroll: So how do you prepare? I assume you had to get into some kind of physical shape to do this. What are some of the tips that your fellow photographers told you about? 

Iván Valencia: Well you have to prepare, like, to be focusing in in your job and we don’t [apart your] your feelings because we are humans, not – you have to to feel for the people, but you have to concentrate more in your mind than your physical strength.

Nicole Carroll: Can you talk about some of the things you saw that were troubling?

Iván Valencia: So there was, like, a lot of little children walking with their families. Some of [them] were crying a lot. And the thing that it was a block me a lot was to so the to see the old people trying to walk the same time with this with the healthy people because some of them are with a walker but you imagine that the walker in the jungle it's not easy for them so there there is a thing that when some person cannot walk anymore, the people leave them in in the jungle. So –

Nicole Carroll: Really?

Iván Valencia: Yeah, it's really a heartbreaker there.

Nicole Carroll: And then what happens?

Iván Valencia: We don’t know. He or she needs to survive with their own resources or something.

Nicole Carroll: So no one picks them up.

Iván Valencia: No.

Nicole Carroll: Or tries to carry them?

Iván Valencia: No, because all the people are trying to get to the border as fast as they can. So it's really their movement, the all is really fast. So if some people are tired or something, they leave them in the jungle.

Nicole Carroll: I Imagine that’s hard for you because you're there to do a job, not to get involved, but it must be hard sometimes.

Iván Valencia: If someone needs help, I will. I will do that. So it's not part of my job, just doing my job. I really care about people. But if the problem is not a big problem, I'm just doing my job and waiting for someone who help them or something. And to do each covering about this situation I was I prepared in with my psychological to to do these kind of jobs because after after each assignment of about this, uh I really fall down with my mind or all of that and I just start to cry or something is really, really hard to to cover these things.

Nicole Carroll: Thank you for mentioning that because you know, a lot of journalists struggle with their mental health when they cover things like this for as long as they do. So saying that and talking about your therapist or your psychologist, I think is really helpful to other people out there.

Iván Valencia: It’s really healthy. We need to normalize that.

Nicole Carroll: While the work is challenging both physically and mentally, Iván says he thinks it’s important for people to understand what migrants are enduring throughout their journeys towards the U.S.

Nicole Carroll: If migrants make it through the jungles of the Darien Gap, to get to the U.S./Mexico border, they then have to go the entire length of Central America, and into southern Mexico. And then for those trying to get to the border between Tijuana and San Diego, it’s another roughly 2500 miles to go.

One of the other AP photojournalists working on this project in conjunction with Iván was Gregory Bull. Gregory has been covering the border between Mexico and the U.S. since the 1990s. He shot one of his winning photos at the border wall between San Diego and Tijuana. So we met up with him, in the fall of 2024, to drive out to the border together.

Gregory Bull: So, we're just going down some dirt roads here that are kind of like, kind of government roads.

Nicole Carroll: Yeah, and I don’t think people who haven’t been to the border realize – especially San Diego, Tijuana, like, that's Mexico right there in front of you. Yeah. I mean, it is one city separated by this wall.

Gregory Bull: Yes. I'm always amazed by that, how people, a lot of people outside of San Diego, are like, wow, how long does it take you to get to the border and I’m like, from my house? About 20 minutes.

Nicole Carroll: Right.

Gregory Bull: Yeah, and I think in this area there are two walls you can see – you have that one there and then, yeah, that's Tijuana on the other side. That whole hillside is Tijuana. And so this area's known as it's just called Whiskey Eight. It's just sort of a way to describe it, you know, from, like, I think from Border Patrol and stuff. It's sort of their code for it. And this isn't an area where people are, like, rushing the border to cross illegally there. They wait to be processed legally for asylum.

Nicole Carroll: In 2023 alone, roughly two and a half million migrants came to the U.S./Mexico border looking for asylum. These are people looking to enter America legally, often fleeing persecution or gang violence. They come hoping that U.S. officials will allow them to make a life in America. In many cases, migrants can be held in custody for weeks while they wait to get processed.  

When we pull up at the border, it’s about 9:00 in the morning. And we’re the only people in sight.

Nicole Carroll: We're standing here at the border wall – it’s called a wall. And it is a wall. But it's, I mean, what are these? These are called what?

Gregory Bull: Bars? Yeah, it's the border structure. Honestly, I've written so many captions about this – this wall-slash-structure – and I'm never really sure what to call it because I don't think “wall,” as you're correctly pointing out, I don't think “wall” really covers it.

Nicole Carroll: But they're basically six inch square metal steel poles that are connected at the top and the bottom. How tall is that? Is that 30 feet? What is that?

Gregory Bull: Yeah, maybe 30, 40 feet.

Nicole Carroll: And there's probably about, what, five inches of space in between each of these poles.

Gregory Bull: Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: So there's enough room to put your arm through them.

Gregory Bull: Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: We’re standing next to a few tents, the kinds vendors use at markets. Gregory says they belong to various NGOs and nonprofits.

Gregory Bull: Basically, folks tend to come at night here. Volunteers will come and hand out water, coffee, maybe something to eat and that sort of thing through here. So –

Nicole Carroll: So yeah, when you approach a scene as a photographer, as a journalist and as an artist, what are you what are you looking for?

Gregory Bull: We're usually after we're headed down for some story or other typically. But yeah, getting here I am thinking first of light really, and I'm always hit with like, how do you pack? How do you pack for a trip like this? You don't know how long you're going to be walking. You're going through the Darien Gap, which is the jungle, and now you're in this cold, dry desert. You know, how do you pack for a trip like that? And you've got you can't bring much, you know, what shoes do you bring for that kind of a trip? What jackets do you bring? How do you clothe your kid, you know, as you're going up? That's always what I'm hit [by] when I see folks up here.

Nicole Carroll: I think that's so important that you point that out because I think so much of the coverage is just numbers of people, right? Thousands of migrants. And they're always like a migrant, you know, chain of people. But when you see a family sleeping up close, you know, these are people. These are people who are making a really dangerous journey.

Gregory Bull: Yeah, I'm always hit by the humanity part of it.

Nicole Carroll: And you had mentioned most people come at night to cross. How do you handle that as a photojournalist? Do you use a flash? Do you have night vision? Like, tell us technically how you get those images at night.

Gregory Bull: Yeah, I pretty much never use a flash. It's so garish. The light and so one dimensional. Two dimensional. I don't love the look of it. And also, it just seems disrespectful to be bombing light on people. So I bring as little as possible the smallest camera with just one lens. And the cameras these days are so good at low light levels that you can shoot at, you know, nearly dark now. Um and that's all changed a lot over the last decade or so. And cameras are silent now. Mirrorless cameras are silent and that makes a massive difference. I think you're just way less obtrusive and less annoying, if you want to put it that way. You're sort of out of their space a little bit in terms of it's quiet and small.

Nicole Carroll: One of the photos in Gregory’s submission depicts a group of migrants on the Mexican side of the border. They’re reaching through the gaps in the border fence, trying to get a knitted sweater that someone is holding up on the U.S. side. The only faces we have a clear view of belong to a woman and a young girl. The little girl is wearing a bright pink hat, and she’s staring straight at Gregory.

Gregory Bull: At that time, there were hundreds and hundreds of people waiting to be processed. And a lot of volunteers came down to see what they might be able to do to offer, you know, help in some way if they could. And so at that point, a woman had come down uh with blankets and she was, like, does anyone need any blankets? And they were, like, yes, because they had no idea at this point how long they're going to be in this position. But she had a very limited amount of blankets. So people were sort of reaching through, trying to grab the blankets, but in hand. It was chaotic, but it was friendly. It wasn't like they were grabbing at stuff and, you know, people were being trampled. And folks are sort of like sticking their head through and hands through and shooting it. I had shot this for a bit as she was slowly running out of blankets. And nothing really worked very well. And I was waiting for some sort of dynamic [angle] to come in. And it wasn't until the woman put her hand down and I'd seen this gesture of sort of futility that there's a woman in the middle of the frame where she's trying to reach. And then she didn't want to be too impolite. So she kind of put her hand down a little bit, sort of realizing this is the last blanket and she's not going to get it. And then another person shoved their hand through in the top right corner. And for me, that gave it this sort of dynamic, dynamic feel to it.

Nicole Carroll: Big truck going by on the other side. [truck sounds] The other thing about this photo, so many things about this photo, but that woman's face in the middle, I mean she's obviously the center of your photo. Can you talk about what you know, why you focused on her and made her the center of this photograph?

Gregory Bull: Yeah. She was able to express, you know, visually sort of the feel of the moment of this kind of desperation you know, the end of the amount of blankets being given out was just a sort of a almost a metaphor for the fact that they basically are unsure about what the next step is and not sure if this is going to go according to plan at all for them.

Nicole Carroll: So as a photojournalist, as a journalist, when you're in a public place, you can take photos, you can write the scene, you don't need permission. This is your job. You're documenting what you see. But do you seek permission of the folks you photograph? And how do you deal with minors?

Gregory Bull: Yeah, there's a weird thing about, like, do you ask before or do you ask after? I guess I sort of think of it, like, do you ask before you publish? Because sometimes if you ask before you even shoot the picture, you've altered the whole thing. Like, there's a family sitting over there. You walk over to the mom, you're like, oh hi, I'm a photographer. I was hoping to shoot pictures, would that be okay? And they're like, sure. And then you walk back and people tend to turn almost to cardboard. At that point, there's suddenly this artificial thing you've done. They were doing their own thing and you've interrupted it by walking over. So sometimes I'll shoot if I feel like the moment, you know, allows for that. And the person and the people seem to allow for that. There's an understanding if they catch me and they see me in their eyes and I start to shoot, then I do that. But then definitely, especially with migrants, asylum seekers, you have to check, you know, like, is this okay? Can I ask your name? Is it okay to use your name? They have many of them have a lot of very good reasons why they don't want their photo and their name out there. So I think we have to we're always trying to be super careful with that.

Nicole Carroll: So, do you have a policy of asking permission? Or like when you were at the wall, there was a lot of people I don't assume you asked each one of them for permission or did you?

Gregory Bull: I think when it's a large mass like that and you're just shooting, you know, bunches and bunches of people in there, you sort of rely on the idea of like, I'm shooting and I'm obvious and I'm right here, you know? And if I ever hear anyone be like, oh please, don't shoot my picture’ then it's done. I don't shoot anything at that point. They often have a good reason.

Nicole Carroll: You also talked about how you're not shoving your way to the front of this line to get this picture. I heard you describe it as you disappear in plain sight.

Gregory Bull: Yeah, it's crazy because you come up, you've got cameras all over you, and you're quite noticeable. But I do feel like in these things, you have to really just sort of recede to the background. You know, I don't speak a lot when I'm at these things other than to say hello and be polite, but I don't really carry a conversation because I don't want to have that engagement verbally. I'm just where I'm trying to work like visually with it. I sort of stand off a bit and just sort of quietly work, basically. Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: And what I love, too, is this little girl down here in the pink hat just staring like, you know, she's had no idea what's going on, right? She's what looks like six, seven years old. And all these people are grabbing for blankets through a wall. I mean, it's to me that's produced and that that pink hat just draws your attention.

Gregory Bull: Yeah. Yeah. And she's wearing the silver. That silver sort of blanket, sort of the metal blanket that you see along the border that they use in and that that are brought sometimes, I think, by Border Patrol and stuff to give them something to warm up with. But I don't know what you call those blankets but yeah,

Nicole Carroll: It's like the thermal blanket.

Gregory Bull: Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: The mylar blanket.

Gregory Bull: Yes.

Nicole Carroll: She's looking right at you, the little girl. So the mom is up top, if that's her mother reaching through and all these hands carrying around. This little girl's just watching you. Did you notice that at first? Was that a surprise?

Gregory Bull: I did. I did. And to be quite honest, as a photographer, I didn't like that. But, you know, because I just thought, it draws me. I'm in there now in a way. But then and then there was something I sort of made my peace with it. I realized like, for one, it's happening and I'm not going to offer any, you know, guidance to people at all. That's photojournalism. You just–what is happening is happening. And then I sort of came around to it and sort of liked the way that it draws in the reader. You can't really look away. It's sort of like she's looking right at you.

Nicole Carroll: Yeah. Describe to me the power a single image can have. Why is the photojournalism of this particular crisis so important about the migrant journeys, the border politics? What do photojournalists bring to this moment?

Gregory Bull: I feel like it's the best, in my opinion, the best medium to capture that part of humanity that's in there. Like, I may not offer any answers to what we should do or not do about the topic, but it does definitely leave you a sense of like, oh, these are actually people making this journey. And this big movement around the globe is really about all these small stories and these tiny stories in there of humanity, basically. And I will say I'm amazed it still has that effect, despite everyone having a phone in there with a camera in their pockets. There's something about the way you can study a still photograph versus a video or in audio or in movies where a still photo just is just stopped. And you, you can look at it how much time you want. I feel like something about that gives it more weight. it sort of, like, stands still in time, and I've always loved that part of it.

Nicole Carroll: Later on, Gregory said that he doesn’t usually know what happens to these children he photographs, especially the ones who arrive alone without any family. Once they're taken in by Border Patrol, what does the next part of their journey look like? Gregory said he finally understood what happens to many unaccompanied minors after he read Hannah Dreier's work in The New York Times.

Hannah Dreier: Basically, the U.S. has decided if a child comes to the border without an adult, they get to come in automatically and then ask for asylum and go through the legal process.

Nicole Carroll: Hannah Dreier works for The New York Times and she won the 2024 Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for her coverage of unaccompanied minors in the U.S. Unaccompanied minors that go through the asylum process are sent to live with quote “sponsors.” A sponsor might be a relative, but in many cases, it’s a complete stranger.

Hannah Dreier: I would talk to their parents and they would tell me ‘I tried to cross the border myself and I was turned back three times.’ Like, these were people who were just sort of idly sending a 12 year old up to work at a slaughterhouse. They had tried everything else. It has just become so hard to get into this country. People are so desperate to come. So these articles were trying to answer the question, what is happening to the half million children who are crossing the border without their parents? And I had spent years covering this population before we started these articles. And I here and there would come across kids who were working. And I sort of wondered, is there is there a bigger population of working children in this country? And I thought maybe there's children working in agriculture and maybe we'll find children who are doing sort of dishwashing jobs. But instead, what we found was this hidden workforce doing the most dangerous, brutal jobs in this country, working in factories, working in slaughterhouses, working in construction. And I talked to people who work closely with these children, like social workers, teachers. And they estimate that the majority of kids who cross the border without their parents now are ending up working full time in adult jobs.

Nicole Carroll: While they're going to school or not going to school?

Hannah Dreier: A lot of them are not going to school. A lot of these kids would love to go to school. I talked to so many children who couldn't read, who signed their names with an x. And they told me what they would want most for their life in America was just to be able to go to middle school. And they were hoping that they might earn enough money to pay off their debts and have a little bit of savings and then enroll in school. And then I also talked to a lot of kids who were going to school all day and then working all night.

Nicole Carroll: I think some people might think, well, teenagers get jobs all the time after school or during the summer. So how are these different?

Hannah Dreier: Right. I mean, one of the really sad things is that a lot of these kids qualify for work permits. So that means that if they filed paperwork, they could get a permit to work in McDonald's, work at a grocery store, do the kind of jobs that, you know, we all probably did as teenagers there are plenty of safe jobs [that] a teenager can do. But they’re so disconnected from any sort of resources that they don't know, they can ask for that. And instead they end up doing these other kinds of jobs that children should never do because it's the only kind of work that they can get without legal paperwork.

Nicole Carroll: So what kinds of companies and industries did you find are employing the migrant children and what are some of the more well-known ones?

Hannah Dreier: I was shocked. It's, I mean, household brands. We found children working on products for Chewy bars, Nature Valley bars, Cheerios. Fruit of the Loom socks. Ford. General Motors cars, Gerber baby food.

Nicole Carroll: How did you find all these children? You talked to 500, you said.

Hannah Dreier: You know, we started with data for this project. We knew that the government was keeping track of where they sent children and who the children were living with. So, like, if the child was living with a mother or a father or an aunt or uncle or a stranger, and we ended up suing the government to give us hundreds and thousands of rows of data about where kids had gone. With that data, we were able to put together a map that basically showed where kids were going and living with distant relatives or strangers. We knew that those were the kids who were the most likely to be put to work. And then I basically just started flying out to all of those small towns and cities.

Nicole Carroll: Where would you start?

Hannah Dreier: One of the first places that I went was Florida. I saw on this map that there was a town that had a huge number of kids who had been released to non-family members. And within a day of getting on the ground in this town, which is just outside of Miami, I was having dinner in a house with seven minors who are all working in roofing during the day. And roofing is banned for anybody who's under 18 because it's so dangerous. And all these kids were going to work the next day. Some of them had already fallen off of roofs and it was just totally normalized in this community.

Nicole Carroll: So there’s this group of kids at dinner. Do you just walk up to them and introduce yourself or how do you approach a minor when you're meant to report on them?

Hannah Dreier: So in this case I started my day at a day labor site. You go at dawn. People are sort of standing around waiting to be picked up. And so it's a good place to start talking with people because everyone’s sort of bored and everyone initially assumes that you're ICE or you're the police. So you have to dispel that fear. And then some people didn't get any work that day, which is sort of helpful for reporting because then I could spend the day with them and chat with them. And the whole time I'm asking, you know, are you seeing young people? Are you seeing people who are maybe here without any family? Where do they hang out? And by talking to one person and then another person you eventually get invited to the house where all the unaccompanied minors are having dinner and getting ready to go to their work site the next day. And then, you know, I spent two more weeks there before I was able to go up on a roof with a 12 year old from that house. A lot of this reporting is just sort of having the luxury of time.  

And some of the first children I talked to were in a ninth grade classroom in Michigan, and I was there in Grand Rapids just looking for these kinds of working children. I started talking to these kids in their last period, and they told me that they all had to go and work at a cereal factory overnight. And these kids often didn't know exactly who they were working for because, you know, they're 14 years old. And I asked around and I was trying to figure out where would children be working in this town. And people told me, oh there's this place that makes Cheerios. And so I went there at midnight, and lo and behold, these children walked right up to the factory and went in. And it was a lot of that kind of reporting, like talking to kids in schools and then watching midnight shift changes, watching like the 6 a.m. shift change. And, you know, you can sort of tell if somebody is a child. They had baby faces. They were playing tag a lot of the time. You know, they sometimes [wore] their school uniforms, they had backpacks. And so I would sort of pick them out as they were walking out of the factory and try to not feel too creepy and go and start talking to them.

Nicole Carroll: The New York Times had a note and it said that you really had a discussion about using a child's full name and where they were. What was that discussion? What were you guys talking about?

Hannah Dreier: You know right at the outset when we were first thinking about trying to take on this project, we had this conversation about can we even do this? And it really wasn't clear at all that we were going to be able to do the project. We decided that. The only way to do it well was to name the children who we were talking about and also to name the companies where they were working. And our thought was without that, it would feel too vague. Like if we wanted to write something that could really prompt change and really affect how people think about child labor in this country we had to make it as concrete as possible and we wondered if, like, maybe we should just do a different project because it was going to be too dicey to name these children.

Nicole Carroll: Were you worried that you could actually impact their lives?

Hannah Dreier: Oh, totally. Because, I mean, these are kids who are here. It's like the most vulnerable situation a person can be in. They're a child. They don't speak the language. They don't have any family nearby and they're on the hook for supporting themselves. And the way we sort of solved this in the end was we talked to hundreds of kids, but we only named the ones who we felt like would have another way to support themselves after the story ran because the kids did lose their jobs because of our reporting. And so the kids who appeared in the stories were with family who would support them, or they were very close to getting a work permit and they were, in the end, able to get other kinds of jobs. We also got consent from their parents in their home countries, their sponsors in this country. And whenever we could, their teachers, their pastors, all of the adults in their lives, because really a child can't give consent.

Nicole Carroll: That's powerful–that these parents and sponsors, knowing that it could impact their child, wanted to do it anyway so that everybody understood what was going on.

Hannah Dreier: Oh, yeah. I mean, these parents had profound regrets about sending their children north. They imagined that their children would come up here and get jobs if not easy jobs, at least not life-threatening jobs. And they thought that their children might have a better life. And instead, they found that these children come here and they are working the most dangerous jobs in the country, getting hurt. Some of these children were killed even. So when I talked to their parents, they would tell me in tears, you know, I wish I'd never done this, and I want other people to understand what it can be like.

Nicole Carroll: How do you separate your professional duty versus, you know, you've got a kid texting you about working on a roof? Like how do you, I'm sure you want to help him in some way. And that's not your role.

Hannah Dreier: I mean, that's sort of the hardest part of the job. We talked before I started this reporting about what would happen if we encountered a situation where we felt like we had to involve Child Protective Services – or CPS – and luckily it never got to that point. There were a couple situations that I did tell teachers about. But, yeah, I think at a certain point you scrap the story and just intervene. I think, you know, if you don't do that, like you're really not you're really not doing your job well. And in the case of the child, labor reporting, what we did often was we just didn't put a child in the story. And we're like, we're human beings before we're reporters; let’s not complicate this person’s life by putting them in The New York Times and I feel good about those decisions.

Nicole Carroll: Right. It's interesting, in your reporting, you talked about even sometimes the teachers, who knew what was going on, didn't want to report because they were worried the kids would lose their job and it would make life worse for them, which I thought was really interesting.

Hannah Dreier: Yeah. I mean, it's so hard to see a kid in this situation who has way too much pressure on them, but on the other hand, doesn't really have another alternative. And one of the lines that we drew in the end was that we were not okay with kids doing work that was physically dangerous. There's a lot of child labor violations that have nothing to do with physical harm. Like, you're not supposed to work overnight. You're not supposed to do certain things that are not going to harm you. But whatever other laws say, you shouldn't do them. We focused exclusively on jobs where kids were getting their arms torn off, falling off of roofs, getting, you know, terrible brain damage. And in those cases, we sort of decide,  like, yes, these kids will lose their jobs, but child labor laws exist for this reason to protect kids from physical harm.

Nicole Carroll: How young that the youngest that we're working, that you found?

Hannah Dreier: Ten, 11 years old. I think that's about the limit of how young they'll come if they're coming up to be put to work. And some of them would have been working in their home countries also at even younger ages. Those younger kids tended to be sort of the most proud of the work that they were doing. Those were the ones who would tell me, yes, you know, I'm in the factory all day long. Yes, I have chemical burns on my hands, but I feel really good because I'm supporting my baby sister back home. I was just so struck again and again by how these kids didn't have a concept of themselves as a victim at all.  

Nicole Carroll: Right, and you talk about sort of two different groups here you’ve got here, you've got the kids who their family sent them up or they came up because they wanted to help their family. And then you've got the kids who were trafficked. And I was really interested to read that one of the kids met their sponsor on Facebook Messenger and did that money go back to their parents? Were these people just taking advantage of them and taking their wages? What happened to those kids?

Hannah Dreier: Yeah, so this is a kid who met his sponsor on Messenger. His sponsor said, you're going to have a great life here. You can go to school. I really want to help you. And so he came up it was during that time that children were moved through shelters really quickly without maybe the vetting that should have happened. And when he showed up, his sponsor said, sure, you can go to school, but after you've paid off this $10,000 debt plus monthly interest, plus I'm going to charge you for the meal we just had and all your clothes and this mattress that I have gotten for you to sleep on for a few weeks. And so he found himself in this situation that he couldn't get out of. He was ashamed and didn't want to tell his family back home. And he ended up going to work immediately. He started working in a restaurant, you know. He was working illegal hours and giving all his money to this man. Eventually, he said, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to start going to school. And the man started threatening him and he said, I'm going to come and I'm going to punch you. Eventually, he threatened to hurt his family back home. And this kid was just trapped. You know, all the kids I talked to, we're excited to leave and excited to cross the border, And then this totally different reality sets in.

Nicole Carroll: So some of the kids that had the more exploitative sponsors. What kind of access challenges did you have? How did you get into those stories?

Hannah Dreier: It was so tough because I didn't want to ever show up at these kids’ houses and be sort of spotted by their traffickers are there, their sponsors. And I also didn't want to tax these kids and have that seen by their sponsors. So it was really a matter of learning the sponsors’ schedules so that I could come when the sponsors may be at work and talk to these kids. It was such hard reporting. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation like that before. Usually if you're reporting on a kid, you want to talk to the adult in their life to make sure that the adult consents and can sort of help navigate the relationship. These are these situations where you're trying so hard not to upset the kids situation at work, upset the kids situation with their sponsor. Make trouble for them at school. But on the other hand, you have to spend a lot of time with them because that's the only way to build trust so that they can really tell you about their experience and what’s going on

Nicole Carroll: You would think these are reputable companies who don't want to have this happen, but yet it happened. How does it happen?

Hannah Dreier: So, when we called the companies to tell them what we had found, they told us they were shocked. They couldn't believe this. They were going to immediately hire lawyers to get to the bottom of what had happened and do audits. But I mean, it was really a matter of just standing in those factory parking lots and watching obvious children go in and out of the factories. So I don't know how they could have really been that surprised if they were paying attention.

Nicole Carroll: Right. But you did document that sometimes the kids one in particular, you said a man came and applied for the job and got the job, but then a kid showed up with the same name to do the job.

Hannah Dreier: Yes. I mean, there are lots of strategies being used here. And these kids are, for the most part, using legal paperwork to get these jobs or using other people's IDs. So it's not as simple as companies have just decided out of nowhere that they want to hire 13 year olds to clean like bone splitters. In a slaughterhouse. What's happened in part is that there's been this sort of fissuring of the workplace where maybe you have Chick-Fil-A and they are hiring Marczak like the meat processor. But then Marczak is going and getting a third party staffing agency, and it's a staffing agency that is bringing in a 15 year old who's then killed on the job. So you might see a headline like “Chick-Fil-A using child labor. 15 year old killed.” But it's not as simple as the company has directly hired that child. One change that we've seen since this reporting came out is the government is now going after the bigger brands for child labor, even when the child is technically hired by a third party.

Nicole Carroll: And has that made a difference?

Hannah Dreier: I actually think that it is making a difference. I mean, from what I have heard from within the industry, I think that companies are really worried about seeing their company name in a press release. So the fine for child labor is still capped at $15,000, which for these companies is absolutely nothing. By seeing your company's name next to child labor or child death in a government press release or a newspaper article, I think really does have these companies worried.

Hannah Dreier: We published this story on a Saturday. On Sunday, I'm told President Biden read it in print. That afternoon [he] called his Cabinet together, put together an entirely new task force. Changed how the Department of Labor was going to enforce child labor, changed how Health and Human Services was going to support these children. And on Monday, they held a press conference announcing basically a solution to every single problem that we had highlighted. It was just mind-blowing to see. And, you know, we were skeptical. We thought, okay, maybe this is damage control. But what we've seen in the last year is that the Department of Labor raided Tyson again, found more children working at the slaughterhouse.

They're charging much higher fines. And then Health and Human Services started going out and actually visiting children on the ground after they're released, they have a policy of following up on every child instead of like some small fraction of the children that go out. Schools we're seeing are educating children now about what their rights are at work. California passed a law making this mandatory. Other states have passed laws increasing state fines for child labor. Companies have totally changed how they're auditing their night shifts and how they're checking identification. The list just goes on and on. And I mean, I cannot tell you how surprised I am to see this kind of reaction.

Nicole Carroll: Can you talk about the kids themselves that you profiled? What's happened to the kids?

Hannah Dreier: Yeah so Carolina, this 14 year old–

Nicole Carroll: Yeah.

Hannah Dreier: Who was going to ninth grade all day and then making Cheerios all night, she actually got a work permit. So she is working a safer, daytime part-time job. She's in school. A lot of the children who we wrote about are just in school full time. They don't have to work.

Nicole Carroll: So what changed for them? I mean, if they had to work because their sponsor couldn't afford the rent or what changed in their life that allowed them to go back to school?

Hannah Dreier: I mean, in some cases, it was truly just readers helping them.

Nicole Carroll: Like donations.

Hannah Dreier: Yeah, we wrote about one 14 year old who'd had his arm shredded at a Purdue slaughterhouse, and he, after he was so severely injured, couldn't go back to the slaughterhouse. But he was working, sorting dead chickens from live chickens at the hen house before the chickens go to the slaughterhouse and then going to school in the day. And he received $50,000 from readers. So he was able to pay off his debt, help his family back home and just focus on being a student. But, I mean, there are also kids who weren't in our stories who didn't get that support.

Hannah Dreier: Immigration in general is just so polarized. And I feel like people arrive with their minds made up. I find it helpful to try to imagine what kind of story might break through to somebody who thinks that they already have decided. And some of the most important reader mail I've gotten with this series has been from people who say, I don't support illegal immigration or I don't like immigrants. But I really felt for the kid in your story, or I really do want these kids to get more help. I feel like when you can break through to somebody like that, it sort of shows that, I don't know, the work is still worthwhile.

Nicole Carroll: Absolutely, your reporting did have tremendous impact.

Nicole Carroll: So how did you learn that you had won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting?

Hannah Dreier: I was out on maternity leave, actually, but I got invited to come into The New York Times newsroom for the day to watch the announcement all together. And I brought my six-week old and we were all standing in this room. And then they announced my name and everybody started clapping. And this little baby was so shocked. It was like the loudest noise she'd ever heard in her life – she was just, like, looking all around. But it was, like, so wonderful to be able to be there with my colleagues.

Nicole Carroll: Photojournalist Gregory Bull also got to share the special experience with his children.

Gregory Bull: I was in my kitchen and I look at my phone and it's our main boss calling. She's great. But she doesn't call me day to day. I’m definitely in the trenches. And I’m, like, this can't be good. And she just said, I've got some good news. And, you know, you guys, you won the Pulitzer. And I was, like, really? And I had to drive to L.A. for two assignments, and then I was going to meet my daughter, who's a student at UCLA.

Nicole Carroll: Did your daughter think it was cool?

Gregory Bull: Yeah, yeah they did, I have one 17-year-old and one 20-year-old so I was afraid, like, I would have to explain to them, like, so the Pulitzer Prize. This is what it is you know – but they were not that way at all. They're like, my God, I can't believe it.

Nicole Carroll: Like Hannah and Gregory, Iván Valencia also had a multi-generational celebration when he won his Pulitzer.

Iván Valencia: I was in my home with my mom. And my boss was like, he texted me, like, Iván, have you time [for] a conversation? And I said yes, is something happening? I was thinking like, my God, what I am doing or something's wrong or something is happening there. And I was waiting for the call. And the moment he called me was a group calling with some executives for AP. And with my boss [who] was like, hey, Iván, I have good news for you. You with a group of for a journalist for who collaborate for AP  just won a Pulitzer Prize. And I was. Are you kidding me? That's, that's, no, that's not true.

Nicole Carroll: Did you tell your mom? Was she right there?

Iván Valencia: She was next to me in that moment. She heard all of that and she was crying – it was a good moment.

Nicole Carroll: Oh, that's so sweet.

Iván Valencia: Yeah.

Nicole Carroll: I'm so glad you got to share that with your mom.

Iván Valencia: Exactly, because my mom is a journalist also.

Nicole Carroll: Really? That’s great.

Iván Valencia: Yeah, she's retired right now. But she covered a lot of the kind [of things] I’m doing right now, like, conflict, post-conflict. She covered a lot of wars in Colombia. So she was so proud in that moment with me.

Nicole Carroll: A lot has changed with U.S. immigration policies since Iván, Hannah and Gregory received their Pulitzers. When we first talked to Gregory in the fall of 2024, it wasn’t unusual for him to see migrants along the border seeking asylum. But that started to shift after President Trump took office again. On the morning of Inauguration Day in 2025, Gregory went to the border to shoot photos of migrants as they stood in line for asylum processing appointments. This group of migrants had scheduled their appointments through an app. As the ceremony proceeded in DC…

Gregory Bull: People start to notice that their app, basically, the information on their appointment would just disappear. Like, they would refresh the app and then it would just say like, oh, you know, there's some problem with data or basically it wouldn't get any more info on their appointments. So families were just distraught. You know, people seem like they were just gutted. They just were just staring at their phone and you know, disbelief. a lot of folks had come quite a distance, including through the Darien Gap. There was really no information as far as what they were supposed to do next or what, and so people just sort of hung out much longer than they needed to, just to see on the off chance, who knows, they've come this far, another few hours or you know even a day. Might as well wait it out. Essentially over the next few days after that, I think [it] just started to slow down and folks just didn't even bother going over there anymore. Some folks, I think, returned back to central Mexico, others stayed in shelters, I think weighing their options, trying to figure out what they do next, but really just everyone sort of in a, you know, holding pattern.

Nicole Carroll: Gregory has been back to the border a few times since Inauguration Day and he says it was much quieter the last time he went.

Gregory Bull: There was no one in between the fences waiting to apply for asylum or anything like that. There's also this sense of, like, nobody knows for sure, what the next step is or what's the next thing we'll see along the border. So there’s just kind of this sense of wondering what comes next, if anything.

Nicole Carroll: That’s it for this episode of Pulitzer on the Road. 

Thank you to Iván Valencia and Gregory Bull, two of the 2024 Pulitzer winners in Feature Photography.

And thank you to Hannah Dreier, the 2024 Pulitzer Winner in Investigative Reporting.

For more details about this work and the work of all Pulitzer winners, please visit our website at www.pulitzer.org. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Pulitzer on the Road is a production of the Pulitzer Prize Board and is produced by Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios.

This show is hosted by me, Nicole Carroll.

This episode was produced by Marialexa Kavanaugh. Our senior producer is Justine Daum.

Production support from Melissa Akiko Slaughter.

Our executive editor is Joel Lovell.

The head of sound & engineering at Pineapple Street is Raj Makhija.

This episode was mixed by Marina Paiz, with additional audio engineering by Pedro Alvira.

Music licensing by APM and Epidemic Sound.

Editing, promotion and other support by Pamela Casey, Edward Kliment and Sean Murphy. Bari Finkel and Marjorie Miller are our executive producers.