Lauren Markham is an immigration reporter who covered the stories of unaccompanied children at the southern border in 2012. At the same time, Markham also works as the student program manager at Oakland Unified School District. She works with refugee kids at Oakland International, where there is a large number of undocumented students.
"I think they wanted people to understand their stories because they knew that a lot of what was happening to them and to their fellow students was deeply unfair and they wanted people to know about it."
In her book "The Faraway Brothers," she follows the story of her students, the Flores brothers, on their journey from El Salvador to Oakland. She explores how they are navigating the legal system, immigration laws, and just being in a new country. It all started with the first article she wrote in 2013 about migrant children stuck at the border.
Lauren Markham is the author of ‘The Faraway Brothers." You can catch her at this year’s Bay Area Book Festival.