Jacumba Hot Springs, about halfway between San Diego and Calexico, has become a makeshift detention site for a growing number of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
Jackeline Luna is a former senior producer for video series. Before joining the Los Angeles Times, she interned for Politico, ABC7 and the Mercury News. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a master’s in journalism in May 2018.
Jireh Deng (they/them) was a 2023-24 fellow at the Los Angeles Times. Deng, a queer Asian American writer and filmmaker, was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley. Their freelance reporting and writing have been published in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, PopSugar, LAist and more. In prior positions, they were a fact-checker at the labor magazine In These Times, managed NPR’s Diverse Sources Database as an intern and worked as an associate producer on CapRadio’s limited podcast series on Asian American identity, “Mid Pacific.” Deng currently co-directs the Asian American Journalists Assn. LGBTQIA+ affinity group.
Robert Gauthier has been with the Los Angeles Times since 1994. He was the photographer for a project detailing the failings of an L.A. public hospital that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for public service. Before The Times, Gauthier worked at the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Escondido Times-Advocate and the Bernardo News in San Diego County, his hometown.
