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
-
President-elect Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented migrants — including a million in Florida — but the immigrants most vulnerable to his sweep may actually be those who are here legally. -
COMMENTARY Democrats who are in denial about the liberal condescension that helped elect Donald Trump remind me of Venezuelans who are still in denial about the elitist corruption that helped bring Hugo Chávez to power. -
Spirit Airlines officials confirmed to WLRN that Flight 951 from Fort Lauderdale to Port-au-Prince was shot at while landing at Toussaint Louverture International Airport. -
President-elect Donald Trump's 45% share of Latino voters set a record for a Republican presidential candidate — but the bigger surprise was his strong performance with Puerto Ricans, even after the "garbage" insult. -
COMMENTARY Democrats might not have been so dismissive of populist Donald Trump's inflation exploitation strategy if they had paid attention — as he did — to how well it worked for fellow populist Javier Milei in Argentina. -
Puerto Rico's pro-independence party looked like it had little chance to win the island's gubernatorial race — until vile comments were made about the U.S. territory at a Trump rally last week. It still looked likely to lose to the pro-statehood party on Tuesday, but the closer contest may signal a new political dynamic there. -
A degrading social media meme falsely depicts Nicaraguan migrants who've come to the U.S. legally on a humanitarian parole as agents of Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega — the same brutal dictator they fled. -
COMMENTARY Jeff Bezos' Miami roots should have warned him to avoid the unmistakable impression that he let a major U.S. daily cave to the intimidation of an authoritarian bully like Donald Trump. -
Donald Trump's reprehensible lie about Haitian immigrants has stoked violent threats toward Haitian-Americans — but a big question is whether there are enough high-profile Haitian elected officials in the U.S. to make the community's response more politically potent. -
This week a federal appeals court threw out a lower court judgment that Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Caribbean and MSC Cruises had taken tourists to Cuba in violation of U.S. law.
-
According to a recent poll by Florida International University, 68% of Miami Cubans support former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election
-
COMMENTARY Donald Trump certainly leans fascist — but outright calling him a fascist risks insulting actual fascists' victims, just as equating Kamala Harris with communist dictators insults theirs.
