Bio

She was born in Mexico City, where she was a political reporter. In 2004 she moved to the US, from where she writes about migration and politics for El Universal newspaper (Mexico), Proceso and Gatopardo magazines and Vice Mexico, among many others. She’s the author of Dreamers, an immigrant generation’s fight for their American Dream. Her new book about political asylum in the US is due for publication in 2018.

Eileen holds degrees in Social Communication and Communication and Politics. She has been a board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and is co-founder of Cuadernos Doble Raya, a journalists’ network with members in eight countries. She has been a fellow with the Scripps Howard Immigration Program, the Knight Digital Media Center and the Ibero-American New Journalism Foundation (FNPI, Colombia). In 2016 she was selected by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) as a recipient of the “Bringing Home the World” International Reporting Fellowship, to cover stories about immigrant youth in Spain.

Project

I’m working on a book about Mexicans in the US under the light of the Trump era. This project will tell stories of resistance and success happening every day in a community that has been recently targeted by the President of the United States, but whose members have overcome discrimination and hatred for decades.

I’m aiming to approach the subject from a social justice and human rights perspective. When speaking about immigration, we journalists tend to follow the tone set by politicians and government institutions. Immigration stories are usually linked to economic crisis, changes in legislation, human traffic, death. On the Media, migration equals conflict.

I will tell thirteen everyday, “non-crisis” immigrant stories, to portrait men and women who against all odds are succeeding in a country that keeps telling them that they don’t belong. As a current events reporter, it’s been hard to work with this perspective while covering every day information –with all the noise coming from the White House, the Media, the unofficial Twitter account–. I think that spending a couple of weeks in the environment provided by Faber Residency, working full-time on this project, will help me to put together the kind of book that these stories deserve.