When President Donald Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on his first day in office, thousands of people were left in limbo — many with travel plans already in place or in the final stages of approval. To tell the story behind those disrupted lives, immigration policy reporter Rebecca Santana and immigration writer Gisela Salomon teamed up with Beijing-based Dake Kang to find three families across Asia, the Middle East and Africa whose futures were upended.
Weeks of coordination across AP’s Washington, Asia, Africa and Middle East teams followed, as text, photo and video teams worked to deliver a deeply human, all-formats package. Visual journalists and photographers were deployed to Iraq, rural Kentucky and Chiang Rai province in northern Thailand, while AP’s Nairobi team contributed to coverage in East Africa.
The resulting package offered a rare, ground-level view of the global reach of a U.S. immigration policy — and gave voice to families whose stories would otherwise go untold. It illustrated both the personal cost of political decisions and the AP’s ability to leverage its global footprint to tell urgent, empathetic stories that cross borders and formats.
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