A selection of The Imprint’s most impactful stories from the past year
On August 6, Axel Pecero was lost, wandering around Los Angeles with a dead cell phone in search of his hotel. The young advocate and former foster youth was walking back to his hotel for a work conference after an evening with friends when he was detained by police, and then turned over to federal officers.
As Jeremy Loudenback reports for The Imprint, Pecero now sits at Adelanto ICE Processing Center, one of the thousands of undocumented people swept up in the Trump Administration’s immigration dragnet. Supporters, including his colleagues with California Youth Connection, have rallied on his behalf to prevent his deportation to Mexico.
Pecero’s story is indicative of a larger intersection between the child welfare system and Trump’s immigration agenda. In the past year, the administration has walled off certain federal programs from undocumented youth, and fought in court to terminate federal spending on legal counsel for unaccompanied minors who are seeking asylum in the United States.
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