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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President Trump's special envoy announced Venezuelan Dictator-President Nicolás Maduro will resume ferrying deportees back to Venezuela — which experts say indicates an oil deal is still likely, and which Venezuelans in the U.S. say makes them more vulnerable. -
COMMENTARY With reggaeton star Bad Bunny's support, and after seeing President Trump's terrifying start, independence movements in territories like Puerto Rico and Greenland look energized. -
The Federal Aviation Administration Administration has extended its ban on U.S. flights landing at Haiti’s main airport through Sept. 8. -
Albert Ramdin, the foreign minister of Suriname, has been elected as the new Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), the first person from the Caribbean community to hold the position in the organization's 77-year history. -
President Trump says U.S. foreign aid "doesn't align" with his America First agenda. But in Latin America, data suggest it delivers for his big priority: reducing illegal immigration. It's also a pro-democracy force in the region — and diplomats fear its retreat there further benefits China. -
COMMENTARY If Mexican and Latin American leaders are stunned by President Trump's thug behavior, maybe it's because they never imagined the U.S. would elect a guy who looks like so many of them. -
Directed by Haitian-American filmmaker Robensen Lauvince, the film explores the historical setbacks and social divides that led up to the murder.
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After his special envoy's controversial comment that President Trump "doesn't want to do regime change" in Venezuela, Trump reversed course and tightened oil sanctions on that country's brutal dictatorship. -
President Trump's elimination of stopgap migrant programs like TPS and humanitarian parole makes it easier to carry out his sweeping deportation crusade — but it also raises the question: When will the U.S. ever reform its broken immigration system? -
COMMENTARY We thought former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was imitating President Trump's Jan. 6 thuggery — but it turns out he was allegedly, and quite chillingly, upstaging Trump the whole time. -
COMMENTARY: Republicans call the trial of a former president in Colombia 'unacceptable' political reprisal — but what's truly unacceptable is the retribution Trump's unleashing in America. -
COMMENTARY President Trump's USAID freeze is a doubly self-defeating mistake: it emboldens Latin American dictators he claims to scare and raises the despair of migrants he wants to keep out.
