The San Diego Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is proud to announce our 2019 Journalist of the Year: Jean Guerrero, author and KPBS investigative reporter covering border and immigration.

You name a border story over the past year and Guerrero covered it with persistence and compassion. When the Trump administration announced it would be sending some asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for their cases to reach a judge, Guerrero was there. When a caravan of Central American migrants arrived in Tijuana seeking to enter the United States, Guerrero was there.

And when the Trump administration began separating migrant parents from their children at the border, Guerrero covered that story, too.

In fact, Guerrero’s first story on family separations at the border came many months before the issue made national headlines. And the people in her stories have names — like Jose Demar Fuentes, an asylum seeker from El Salvador whose one-year-old son, Mateo, was taken from him and sent to a shelter in Texas nearly 1,500 miles away. Jean gave a face to the policy of family separation, earning enough trust from the family to interview the mother, Olivia Caceres, on camera after she got her son Mateo back.

Guerrero’s reporting was frequently featured in national media. Her depth of understanding of the border sets her apart from many of the national reporters who have been parachuted in.

And as if her contributions to our understanding of the U.S.-Mexico border weren’t great enough, last year, Guerrero came out with her own personal story of the border. Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, tells the moving story of her own family’s history of crossing borders, both physical and metaphysical.

Please join us in celebrating Jean Guerrero and all of this year’s award winners at our annual banquet on July 17 at the Kona Kai Resort and Spa. Click here to see a full list of award winners and purchase tickets.