WLRN investigative reporter Daniel Rivero has been honored with a human rights award by a respected nonprofit that fights for the rights of immigrants.
He was recognized by Americans for Immigrant Justice (AIJ) for his work on the “compelling and informative” Detention by Design, a podcast tracing the beginnings of immigrant detention in the U.S. to the arrivals of Cubans and Haitians by boat in Florida in the 1970s and 1980s.
The six-part series earned him the Holly Skolnick Human Rights Award, which the AIJ gives "in recognition of an individual’s significant contribution to advancing the cause of human rights.”
Rivero was presented with the award on Feb. 24 before hundreds of invited guests at the nonprofit's annual dinner gala at the JW Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Miami. He was honored alongside bestselling Salvadoran author and activist Javier Zamora, who received the America's Immigrant Spirit Award.
In attendance, along with immigration attorneys, advocates and other civic leaders from South Florida, were Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Miami-Dade Commissioner Marleine Bastien, who founded the Family Action Network Movement (FANM). Bastien, a Haitian immigrant herself, was interviewed for the series.
Detention by Design, which was researched, written and narrated by Rivero for WLRN, had already won a regional Edward R. Murrow Award in 2023.
READ MORE: Introducing WLRN’s new podcast: Detention By Design
Through personal histories and meticulously compiled archival materials, the series tells how those early arrival of migrants by boat — and the crude experiments in small Florida jails that followed — shaped the immigration and detention system that we have in this country today.
Americans for Immigrant Justice fights to protect and promote the human rights of immigrants in Florida and across the country through free legal representation, policy reform and public education.
The Holly Skolnick Human Rights Award is named after a Greenberg Traurig immigration attorney who served for many years on the AIJ board and chaired the law firm's Pro Bono initiative. She passed away in 2013.
Detention by Design was produced with support from The Shepard Broad Foundation.
