The Ballad of Lidia Terrazas

Meet America's Most Relentless Immigration Reporter

WASHINGTON — Lidia Terrazas couldn’t answer my questions today.

That’s my whole column here, really, right there in that one sentence. But since you came this far, let me explain what I mean.

I had a list of them. Good ones, I thought. The kind of questions you ask a journalist you’re profiling — where she grew up, what drew her to this work, what it feels like to be Mexican-born and reporting on what the United States government is doing to Mexican families in real-time in 2026. The kind of questions that give a column like this its color and its texture and its little human moments that make readers feel like they know somebody.

She didn’t have time for any of it.