Stephen Ceasar
The experience stayed with him even after he moved farther from the border — first to El Centro, Calif., and then to Tucson, Ariz., where he majored in journalism at the University of Arizona. His choice of study was propelled by a desire to illuminate border issues that he said most of the country isn’t familiar with.
“It wasn’t weird for me to see people jumping the wall and just running,” said Ceasar, now 21. “Most people aren’t aware of the political climate or the social climate of a border town. The environment is very foreign” to them.
In the late summer of 2008, Ceasar started working for the Arizona Daily Star as an apprentice on the border team. Looking at the border from that perspective helped him expand his knowledge of immigration issues, Ceasar said.
“There are so many more aspects of it than people putting water in the desert for undocumented immigrants or the illegal drug trade,” he said. Often, he added, the environmental, economic and social aspects of border crossings go overlooked.
Ceasar soon embarked on a seven-month investigative project with Daily Star reporter Brady McCombs. The two-part series uncovered abuses and a lack of regulation of a federal border security program funded by tax dollars. It’s projects like this, he said, that make him believe in journalism.
“I take the public service part of journalism very seriously,” he said. “Our main purpose is to make the public aware of what’s going on in the cities and countries that they live in.”
A version of this article appeared in print on page 12 of the Tucson 2010 edition of The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.