Demonstrators protested at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston on Friday, April 17, 2020. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman is a VTDigger podcast that features in-depth interviews on local and national issues. Listen and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.

“I don’t use the word ‘illegals’ to refer to human beings,” says Maria Hinojosa, a trailblazing Emmy Award-winning journalist who has been among the first Latina reporters at PBS, CBS, CNN, and NPR. “We have to actively get those voices out of our head, … break down that narrative and be active in creating a new one.” Hinojosa hosts the nationally syndicated radio show LatinoUSA on NPR and founded Futuro Media, a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on news from a POC perspective. Her new book is Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, in which she tells her own story of nearly being taken from her family when they came legally into the U.S. in the early 1960s. Her personal experience informs her reporting on immigration, family separation and the human rights crisis on our borders.

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