-
Listen Listen
Julia Barajas
What I cover
I strive to bring nuance and context to the issue of immigration, which is often cast as a competition for limited resources or a concern for public safety.
Beholden to no political party, I document the impact of federal immigration policy on Southern California communities—including U.S. citizens of color—while holding our government accountable. My coverage centers human suffering and resilience, with an emphasis on how communities are taking collective action in response to this evolving landscape.
My background
I’ve covered a broad range of issues for English and Spanish-language news media—everything from environmental injustice to the arts. Most recently, I was LAist’s higher education reporter. My work has been recognized by the California News Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, the Press Club of Atlantic City, and the Society for Features Journalism.
My goals
I pledge to reflect SoCal’s economic, ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity in my reporting. This means making it a point to include people who speak Armenian, Arabic, Farsi, Khmer, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Zapotec, and all the other beautiful languages in the place we call home—while acknowledging that Tongva is the first language of this land.
How to contact me
If you or your community have been affected by federal immigration policy, I want to know about it. Also, if you have ideas about stories I should be covering, I welcome your thoughts. You can reach out by email. I'm at jbarajas@laist.com. Or, if you have a tip you’d like to share more privately, you can reach me on Signal. My username is @jbarajas.68.
Stories by Julia Barajas
-
The strikers are demanding better conditions for all detainees.
-
College access advocates say the decline is due to fear of how the Trump administration may use student data and misinformation about available aid.
-
AFSCME canceled a looming open-ended strike.
-
ICE detention centers are placing more people in solitary confinement. Some detainees say they’ve been put in isolation for asking for essentials.
-
Researchers compared students with similar backgrounds and financial circumstances.
-
UCLA says its med school is complying with all federal and state laws and that its admissions process is based on a comprehensive review of each applicant.
-
Immigrants rights groups say the federal government has a constitutional duty to care for the people in its custody.
-
The workers union says the university system continues to engage in bad-faith bargaining. UC says it’s made generous offers.
-
The L.A. Times will host its book festival this weekend, the same time as BookCon in NYC. Is there room enough for both?
-
Jonathan Caravello, a philosophy lecturer at Cal State Channel Islands, was arrested while protesting a raid at a licensed cannabis farm in Ventura county last summer.
-
Jonathan Caravello was arrested while protesting a raid at a licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County.
-
Publicly available data also shows the number of people being held at the facility near Victorville has tripled since last fiscal year.
