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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The Palmetto Bay council is calling on Councilman Steve Cody to resign for his controversial remarks after the recent killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — but many in the South Dade village, including its vice mayor, argue Cody should be removed for other reasons. -
Human Rights Watch and the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Venezuela have documented 19 cases of detainees, many with ties to opposition political parties, who have been denied contact with their families and lawyers since their arrest. -
COMMENTARY President Trump's specious assertion that trafficking deadly drugs into the U.S. constitutes war should also apply to deadly goods trafficked out of the U.S. — especially Florida guns. -
Hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who spent months in El Salvador's brutal CECOT prison after the Trump administration questionably — if not falsely — accused them of gang membership may soon join U.S. legal action. -
Venezuelan gang expert: U.S. risks casualties of innocents with Caribbean military anti-drug missionAs the U.S. military continues anti-narcotics operations in the Caribbean, those who follow Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang warn that non-criminals like migrants and sex-trafficking victims could get caught in the crossfire. -
COMMENTARY It's understandable to label violent drug cartels as terrorists — but that still doesn't make U.S. military attacks on them, like last week's in the Caribbean, justifiable under international law. -
A federal judge in Miami has overturned verdicts amounting to almost $120 million against the Expedia Group and three other U.S. online travel firms.
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COMMENTARY The U.S. military strike on a suspected Venezuelan narco-boat raises the question: is Trump eyeing Nicolás Maduro in the same ill-fated way George W. Bush once eyed Saddam Hussein? -
Despite Venezuela's brutal dictatorship and historic humanitarian crisis, the Trump administration will end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for almost a quarter million more Venezuelan migrants next week. -
COMMENTARY The deadly accident involving an undocumented trucker and three Floridians should prompt mature bipartisan immigration reform — instead of juvenile bipartisan fingerpointing. -
COMMENTARY President Trump is reviving a longstanding U.S. urge to have the military fight the hemisphere's drug cartels — but history suggests sending troops to take down traffickers usually ends badly. -
Although a federal judge in Miami ordered their case be moved to another Florida district, the ACLU and other plaintiffs suing the controversial migrant detention facility over access to attorneys insist they'll win the litigation - and that they have already been handed "an important victory."
