
John Burnett
As NPR's Southwest correspondent based in Austin, Texas, John Burnett covers immigration, border affairs, Texas news and other national assignments. In 2018 and again in 2019, he won a national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio-Television News Directors Association for continuing coverage of the immigration beat. In December 2018, Burnett was invited to participate in a workshop on Refugees, Immigration and Border Security in Western Europe, sponsored by the RIAS Berlin Commission.
Though he is assigned to the National Desk, his beat has sometimes stretched around the world.
He has filed stories from more than 30 countries since joining NPR in 1986. In 2012, he spent five months in Nairobi as the East Africa Correspondent, followed by a stint during 2013 as the network's religion reporter. His special reporting projects have included working in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, as an embedded reporter with the First Marine Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and continuing coverage of the U.S. drug war in the Americas. His reports are heard regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Burnett's 2008 groundbreaking four-part series "Dirty Money"—which examined how law enforcement agencies have gotten hooked on and, in some cases, corrupted by seized drug money—won three national awards: a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award for Investigative Reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Society of Professional Journalists Award for Investigative Reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award for the accompanying website. His 2007 three-part series "The Forgotten War," which took a critical look at the nation's 30-year war on drugs, won a Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for Excellence in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems.
In 2006, Burnett's memoir, Uncivilized Beasts & Shameless Hellions: Travels with an NPR Correspondent, was published by Rodale Press. In that year, he also served as an Ethics Fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.
In 2004, Burnett won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting for his story on the accidental U.S. bombing of an Iraqi village. His work was singled out by judges for the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award honoring the network's overall coverage of the Iraq War. Also in 2003, Burnett won a first place National Headliner Award for investigative reporting about corruption among federal immigration agents on the U.S.-Mexico border.
In the months following the attacks of September 11, Burnett reported from New York City, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. His reporting contributed to coverage that won the Overseas Press Club Award and an Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award.
In 2001, Burnett reported and produced a one-hour documentary, "The Oil Century," for KUT-FM in Austin, which won a silver prize at the New York Festivals. He was a visiting faculty member in broadcast journalism at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in 2002 and 1997. He received a Ford Foundation Grant in 1997 for a special series on sustainable development in Latin America.
Burnett's favorite stories are those that reveal a hidden reality. He recalls happening upon Carlos Garcia, a Mexico City street musician who plays a musical leaf, a chance encounter that brought a rare and beautiful art form to a national audience. In reporting his series "Fraud Down on the Farm," Burnett spent nine months investigating the abuse of the United States crop insurance system and shining light on surprising stories of criminality.
Abroad, his report on the accidental U.S. Air Force bombing of the Iraqi village of Al-Taniya, an event that claimed 31 lives, helped listeners understand the fog of war. His "Cocaine Republics" series in 2004 was one of the first accounts to detail the emergence of Central America as a major drug smuggling region. But many listeners remember the audio postcard he filed while on assignment in Peshawar, Pakistan, after 9/11 about what it was like being, at six-foot-seven, the "tallest American at a Death-to-Americarally."
Prior to coming to NPR, Burnett was based in Guatemala City for United Press International covering the Central America civil wars. From 1979-1983, he was a general assignment reporter for various Texas newspapers.
Burnett graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
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A sheriff on the coastal bend of Texas is a gung-ho partner of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jackson County Sheriff Andy Louderback calls his county non-sanctuary. He contacts ICE whenever he has an undocumented immigrant in custody, and thinks every jail administrator in the country should.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement often asks local jails to hold undocumented people until federal agents can pick them up. Most sheriffs cooperate, but some have taken a stand against the request.
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Facing a new law that slashes family-based immigration, immigrants who are legally in the U.S. are scrambling to legal offices to petition for visas for loved ones abroad to come here.
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There has been a big development in the mysterious death of a Border Patrol agent beside a remote highway in West Texas last year. The case received national attention because President Trump speculated it was a brutal murder committed by smugglers. The FBI now says, after an exhaustive investigation, that they have found no evidence the officer's death was a homicide.
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Mexicans, Central Americans and Haitians make up most people removed from the U.S. But year-end figures analyzed by NPR show that deportations to the rest of the world have jumped 24 percent.
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Year-end figures analyzed by NPR show deportations to all countries — from the Middle East to Africa to Asia — have increased sharply under President Trump compared to Obama's last year in office.
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The sediment and muddy freshwater that spilled into these Texas bodies of water are causing problems for the shipping and oyster industries.
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Bayou water and sewage flooded the city's opera, ballet, and theater companies, ruining wigs, costumes and props. Losses and costs to rebuild may total more than $60 million.
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Fewer people are trying to sneak across the Southwest border, while more undocumented immigrants are being picked up in the interior of the country, according to data released by the Homeland Security Department. It's the most comprehensive data to date on how arrest patterns have changed dramatically under the Trump administration.
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Under the Trump presidency, there has been a dramatic shift in arrests of undocumented immigrants from the Southwest border to the interior of the nation.