Good Morning From Beantown
Dispatch from the WBUR Festival, 2026.
BOSTON, MA. — Good morning from rainy Beantown where I traveled yesterday to participate in the WBUR Festival. Public Radio has played a very important part in my life. From my earliest memories of riding in the booster seat in the back of my parents’ car, listening to Maria Hinojosa tell the stories of immigrant life here in the United States and abroad. I will always support public radio in any way I can.
So when Símon Rios of WBUR asked me to join the New York Times and Boston Herald on a panel about mass deportations, I said yes. For the last five years, I’ve avoided this type of opportunity, choosing instead to focus on “the work”, as it were.
But sometimes focusing on the work means I’m getting out in the world beyond the Beltway bubble and meeting colleagues face to face who I’ve communicated with for years in DMs and group chats. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit of a hermit since I started Migrant Insider. My entire life since Trump returned to power has been lived in the two-square-mile between my home, the White House, and the Capitol.
The wider world I left for others to cover, and frankly, they’ve done a great job at it. When I launched this news site on Substack in October of 2024, there were fewer than a dozen skilled immigration reporters in the country. And that’s being generous.
Now there are hundreds of news professionals banging it out on the beat every week. Some are in print, others are in video, and others are in photography. I want to highlight one such news professional here this morning, photographer Michael Nigro, who is the subject of this excellent piece by Brian Edsall:
It’s definitely worth a read. A lot goes into covering this beat that we defined so thoroughly here last year, in some of the darkest days for migrants in American history. I also mentioned Edsall’s piece because I too have decided to take up photography as the next frontier in my news work.
Those of you who follow me closely know that I have begun shooting in 35mm, a craft that aligns well with my oil painting. I’ve even dedicated part of my art studio to building a dark room so I can develop prints in the old way. I like doing things in the old way because it takes me off my screens.
At one point last year, I was spending 8 to 10 hours a day on my screen tracking brutality by ICE and Border Patrol in videos and posts across the internet. I never left the Beltway for fear that I would be apprehended by the rising police state for my coverage by local police somewhere or at an airport security check.
Well, now I’m leaving the Beltway for forays into broader America, and maybe even abroad. Film photography is less anti-social than oil painting, and I think it has practical applications on the immigration beat and beyond. The medium also gives me the opportunity to post beautiful things on this website for a change, a website that has been a harbinger of bad news, necessary bad news, but bad news nonetheless, for the last year and a half since Trump returned to the White House.
My hope is to make this space more human, and less mechanically driven by news, through dispatches like this and snapshots into my life as the Migrant Insider. What do you think? If you’d rather be bombarded with news, I can, of course, do that too. Or are posts that are more introspective and process-based, like this one, of interest? Let me know in the comments and have a great weekend. As always, please consider supporting my work if you don’t already by subscribing below:
Pablo … your artistry shows up on all fronts. Keep doing/celebrating the old ways and soon you’ll have a fountain pen like mine! Fewer screens - more insights! Thanks much
Mine’s a Lamy too! Beautiful muted blue one. First thing I bought in the French Quarter when I moved there a few years back (I’m in Cleveland now. Grandkids are magnets!). I like that this pen slows down my thinking & writing a tad. Thank you again for the educated mind and resolute heart you invest in your mission, Pablo. And in us!