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I was shocked that to this day, many people involved in this decision-making

still don't understand how immigration enforcement works.

Hi and welcome to Radio Atlantic.

I'm senior producer A.C. Valdez.

Today, we're bringing you a conversation between our editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg and staff writer, Caitlin Dickerson.

Caitlin is the author of the recent piece, An American Catastrophe,

a comprehensive investigation of the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant children from their families.

Caitlin, we have a good amount of time, but we've got a lot to cover, so let me jump in.

And why don't we just start at the beginning?

And by the beginning, I mean, the beginning of your interest in immigration as a subject,

and in particular, when you came to realize that the Trump administration was doing something novel in terms of its enforcement

or its ideology surrounding preventing illegal immigration.

Why don't you just start with when you came to the beat?

Obviously, it wasn't at the Atlantic. You can take us back a little ways.

Sure. So I actually fell into immigration reporting because immigration happened to be something that I knew a lot about when I started out as a journalist.

And as you know, Jeff, early on in a newsroom, your job is to kind of stand out and have smart ideas and show that you can bring something to the table when you're working alongside people who've been doing this a lot longer than you.

And so I was a production assistant and PR that was my first job in journalism had grown up in a part of the country that has lots of immigrants in Merced California on the Central Valley and then studied it in college.

...