Case Study 01

 
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Research question:

What are the risks of protesting as an immigrant or a DACA-recipient living in the United States?

 
 

Story Overview

On May 30th, over 100 protesters were arrested and charged with felonies for rioting after a Black Lives Matter protest in in Phoenix, Arizona. Although The Maricopa County judge quickly dismissed charges brought against the American citizens, noting that the police officers had "copied and pasted" the same probable cause statement across dozens of reports, the four immigrants swept up that night were not as lucky. Months later, one protestor has already been deported back to Mexico; the others are living under constant ICE surveillance and awaiting their immigration hearings.

This research was inspired by Instagram footage shared by Fernando Lopez, 22, on the evening of May 30th. Lopez captured the moment of his arrest, as police officers pulled him and his two childhood friends Johan Montes, 23, and Roberto Cortes, 22, out of their car several hours after protests dispersed.

By piecing together live footage shared by citizen Youtuber Arizona Auditor, I was able to recreate a map of the protest route that evening, tracing protestors from their 9pm start at City Hall to the site of the 11:30pm conflagration in front of the Phoenix police department on Adams Street.

Using this map, we were able to record the exact cross streets where the Phoenix police demonstrated an excessive use of force against peaceful crowds; imposed an arbitrary traffic blockade; conducted arrests; and corralled detainees before busing them off to the Maricopa County Jail late that night.

 
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Repost of Fernando’s footage on May 30th

@zambrano_602’s post caught our attention and helped us determine the time, location and circumstances of two of the DACA arrests.

 
 

With a granular understanding of the protest route and a rough chronology of ‘confrontational events’, we were able to place user-generated videos into a timeline and begin fact-checking our sequence of events. We used social media handles, local journalists, and Maricopa County court records to identify potential interviewees, and members of The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project and The Puentes Human Rights movement helped us make contact with the four immigrant protestors who remained under ICE surveillance.

Over the course of two and a half months, we were able to verify over twenty videos captured by BLM protestors that night. Three of the four detained immigrants provided us with their original cellphone footage from that night or spoke with us on tape. Members of the ACLU, the American Immigration Council, and local migrant rights organizers helped us better understand the risks of protesting for immigrant communities in Arizona.

 

Methodology

 
 

Phase 1: Build out a visual library

 
 
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Create a geo-fence

Pull in all media content posted to Twitter on May 30-31 within a 10km radius of the protests

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Select visual evidence

Create a list of videos that can assist with recreating the police blockade and arrest event

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Connect with sources

Set up conversations to confirm the veracity of videos and gain additional insight into the event

 
 

Phase 2: Write a script

 
 
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Write a first draft of the script

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Develop a list of missing visuals

Determine where we have gaps in open-source footage

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Map interviews and footage onto script

 
 

Phase 3: Post production

 
 

We made a couple of errors in our initial reporting process that added time and energy to post production, namely:

  • Recording every source’s legal name — in addition to their social handles, written or recorded consent and link to INVID documentation for videos

  • Filing footage in one place — we worked with three different editors and by the end of two months, some of our source footage was scattered

  • Downloading high res versions of archival footage or supplemental b-roll provided by interviewees

 
 

The Final Clip

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4 people who were arrested after a Phoenix BLM protest wound up in ICE custody

View full video
 

Reporting Challenges

 

  1. COVID travel restrictions prevented us from conducting interviews in-person or pursuing additional contacts on the ground.

  2. Two of the DACA recipients were unwilling to speak with us on tape until the final week of production. Regular communication and relationship-building assisted with completing this project and honoring their requests.

  3. There was an equally compelling storyline about unlawful conduct and police abuse which we did not directly pursue. The character-driven approach was well-suited to the Business Insider audience, but additional evidence could have been marshaled for a stronger indictment.

 
 
 

Acknowledgements

This piece was made possible by the brilliant investigative reporting of Jacqueline Baylon at Business Insider TV.

Jacqueline first located Fernando’s May 30th arrest footage that provided inspiration for a larger story. I joined the production team as a freelance researcher in order to build out our visual assets, verify user-generated content, and establish a more robust sequence of events culminating in over one hundred arrests. As the story developed, Dylan Bank joined as our editor; Havovi Cooper and Erica Berenstein provided tireless script edits and guided production for BITV.