Leslie Berestein Rojas
My focus is on our coverage of L.A.’s communities of color and immigrant diasporas. Before this, I spent 10 years covering immigrant communities for KPCC.
When I was a kid, my family left Cuba and landed in Huntington Park. I grew up there, speaking Spanish at home and steeped in Southeast L.A.’s beautiful Latinidad. I love telling the stories of L.A. and its people. Now, I get to help shape those stories and work with talented reporters to hone their craft.
I’ve also covered immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border, reported stories in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and done lots more for large newspapers and national magazines.
Among the things I love about L.A.: family, food from everywhere, signs in dozens of languages, the smells of chaparral and dusty freeways, the downtown skyline as you cross a bridge from the east. Mostly, I love that it’s home.
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Standing water in empty pools, yards, planter pots, even the tiniest containers can become breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes. Now that Tropical Storm Hilary is past us, it’s time to go into mosquito-prevention mode. -
Farmworker advocates in the Coachella Valley have been taking stock of Tropical Storm Hilary’s damage to fields, farmworker communities.
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Afghan refugees who arrived in the U.S. as part of a massive airlift that began in August 2021 have been settling in, but many challenges remain.
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The legendary pitcher's No. 34 won’t be worn by any future Dodgers. It’s a tribute to Valenzuela’s role in building the team’s heavily Latino fan base.
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A sixth bus carrying asylum seekers from the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas arrived in L.A. Thursday. Immigrant advocates helping them say bus fare, airline miles, even toothbrushes are welcome.
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A third bus carrying migrants arrived at Union Station from Brownsville on Thursday.
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The Vernon plant had a staff the size of a village — more than 2,000 people, most of them immigrants, many of them longtime workers. Some had been there for decades. Starting over has proven tough.
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A second busload of migrants sent from the border in Texas arrived in L.A. on Saturday. Local immigrant aid groups believe more arrivals are likely in the future — and are planning how to better assist them.
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The migrants bused from Texas to Union Station include asylum seekers from Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and China. Among them are more than a dozen children.
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Recent attacks by people who professed white nationalist and neo-Nazi sympathies but are not white themselves have raised a question: Why are some people of color drawn to white supremacist ideology? The answer is complicated.
