Tim Padgett
Americas EditorTim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida.
Padgett has reported on Latin America for more than 30 years — including for Newsweek as its Mexico City bureau chief and for Time as its Latin America and Miami bureau chief — from the end of Central America's civil wars to the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations. He has interviewed more than 20 heads of state.
In 2005, Padgett received Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Prize for his body of work in Latin America. In 2016 he won a national Edward R. Murrow award for the radio series "The Migration Maze," about the brutal causes of — and potential solutions to — Central American migration.
Padgett is an Indiana native and a graduate of Wabash College. He received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School and studied in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. He has been an adult literacy volunteer and is a member of the Catholic poverty aid organization St. Vincent de Paul.
Contact Tim at tpadgett@wlrnnews.org
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Critics of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele call his "arbitrary" arrest of human rights advocate Ruth López a deepening sign that El Salvador — where President Trump is sending hundreds of deportees this year — is today a dictatorship. -
COMMENTARY Venezuelans and other migrant groups see leaders like Marco Rubio no longer have their backs — because today, boosting deportations matters more than bolstering democracy. -
A wave of prominent Cuban artists — including singer Haydée Milanés, daughter of the late music icon Pablo Milanés — is leaving the island, often in protest of its repressive regime. But their exile isn't without controversy. -
UPDATED: The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation. -
COMMENTARY America is shocked to find it's playing catch-up with China on infrastructure, and influence, in the Americas. But little will change until President Trump chooses partnership over punishment. -
China and the strategic Panama Canal are much on the minds of the western hemisphere security leaders and experts gathered at the 10th annual Hemispheric Security Conference at FIU. -
COMMENTARY If the Trump administration wants federal judges to buy its deportation crusade, maybe it shouldn't admit every country it wants to deport migrants back to is a human rights hell hole. -
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday night on social media that five Venezuelan opposition leaders who'd escaped regime arrest by taking asylum in the Argentine embassy in Caracas 400 days ago had been rescued in a "precise" operation and brought to the U.S. -
Just months after President Trump won a landslide in Florida's largest Venezuelan enclave, a new FIU survey obtained by WLRN shows that enthusiasm has eroded significantly among the state's Venezuelans. But it also shows a stark division: those who have been in the U.S. for 15 years or longer tend to remain supportive of Trump. -
In Broward, DeSantis praises 'first of its kind' operation that arrested 1,120 undocumented migrantsGov. Ron DeSantis and federal immigration authorities are celebrating the “first of its kind” partnership that resulted in the arrest of over 1,120 undocumented migrants across the state. In a press conference, he said two-thirds of those were wanted or convicted criminals. -
The global watchdog Human Rights Watch has issued a scathing new report on the Venezuelan regime’s repression following the presidential election it stole last summer. -
COMMENTARY As long as a do-nothing Congress does nothing to fix a wrecked immigration system, the right and left keep holding the issue — and most Americans — hostage to unreasonable extremes.
