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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Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, currenty in hiding in her country, is touting a major economic reform plan as a roadmap for a post-Nicolás Maduro future — though it's still far from certain if or when the dictator will ever leave power. -
COMMENTARY A new poll shows most Americans back President Trump's immigration and deportation policies — which means protesters this weekend need to build, not burn, bridges to them. -
President Trump may have executive prerogative to end his predecessor's humanitarian parole for migrants, but the courts may rule that revoking it for current recipients is a breach of the U.S. government's word. -
Cuban-American Republicans, U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar and state Sen. Ileana Garcia, are openly criticizing President Trump's immigration policies. -
Haitian and Venezuelan community leaders condemned President Donald Trump’s newly announced travel ban policy that will impact hundreds of thousands of South Florida families with ties to both countries. -
COMMENTARY The partisan leash Mexico's ruling party just clamped on the country's judiciary should be a warning that America's courts are also in the crosshairs of a president pushing loyalty over legality. -
After the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the Trump administration can, for now, end humanitarian parole for half a million migrants, immigration advocates insist the legal battle is not over — and believe it will end sooner than later, now in their favor. Most of the beneficiaries, who come from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua, are in Florida. -
Haiti's desperate interim government is reportedly turning to foreign mercenaries to defeat the country's powerful gangs — but key Caribbean leaders say the route now should be dialogue. -
COMMENTARY It's easy to imagine President Trump adopting the gaslighting warfare used by Venezuela's dictator in Guyana to further his own hemispheric expansion schemes from Panama to Greenland. -
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.
