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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Josue Aguilar came to South Florida as a minor fleeing gang violence in Honduras. Now he faces deportation despite his marriage to a U.S. citizen, their toddler son, a good taxpaying job and a clean criminal record after being taken from his immigration hearing to the notorious Krome Detention Center. -
While visiting Panama this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not mention President Trump's pledge to take back the Panama Canal. Was it just a ploy to make Panama resolve to get tougher on China? -
COMMENTARY Costa Rica is a longstanding democratic model in the hemisphere — but is its controversial president poised to adopt the dictatorial methods of the new autocratic model, El Salvador? -
Democratic U.S. Representatives have sent an angry letter to the Trump administration demanding restored oversight of the controversial Krome detention center for migrants.
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Except for Guyana — which got hit with a 38% duty — Latin America and the Caribbean were relatively unscathed by President Trump's global tariff hikes. Still, experts see significant effects there and here, especially in South Florida tourism. -
UPDATE: COMMENTARY In Guyana, the Trump administration finally offered hemispheric partnership instead of extortion — and rattled China. President Trump just trashed that vibe with a harsh, dubious tariff. -
The U.N. human rights commission's working group has now said it will appeal to El Salvador to consider the recent deportation and imprisonment of Venezuelans “alleged enforced or involuntary disappearances” cases. -
Attorneys for the more than 200 Venezuelans deported to an El Salvador prison say immigration agents used a seemingly arbitrary check-list form to tally points to determine if the migrants belonged to Tren de Aragua. -
The U.S. is warning against travel to Haiti as violent gangs take complete control of the capital, Port-au-Prince — and that's causing security experts to question the Trump Administration's plans to deport half a million Haitian migrants back to Haiti. -
COMMENTARY Dubious plans like more teenage work hours can't replace the undocumented labor that keeps much of our economy going. So let's find smart ways to admit more documented migrants. -
COMMENTARY If President Trump hopes to replicate Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's authoritarian conquest of the judiciary, tiny El Salvador may have a large effect on America's democratic future. -
Venezuelan asylum-seeker Franco Caraballo is believed among the alleged gang members controversially deported to El Salvador last weekend by the Trump administration. WLRN has reviewed papers that show he has no criminal record in the U.S. or in Venezuela, and that ICE based his removal on a tattoo. His attorney has called it a “flagrant violation” of his civil rights.
