Jazmine Ulloa – The Untold History of El Paso

Mountain & Prairie with Ed Roberson

Mountain & Prairie Media

Places & Travel, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jazmine Ulloa is a national reporter who covers immigration for The New York Times and is the author of the new book "El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory." It's a sweeping, deeply researched look at one of the most overlooked regions in the American West. Born and raised in El Paso, Jazmine brings both a journalist's discipline and a personal connection to the story, weaving together archival research, oral histories, and her own family background to explore how this border community has shaped the broader story of the United States.

What makes Jazmine's work especially compelling is the path she took to get here. She started reporting as a teenager, crossing the border with her grandmother to interview families affected by violence… real, high-stakes journalism while she was still in high school. From there, she worked her way up through local papers across Texas, covering crime, courts, and immigration, eventually moving into national political reporting and earning her role at The New York Times. It's a career built the old-fashioned way: curiosity, extreme hard work, and a clear sense of purpose.

In this conversation, Jazmine and I focus on the long, layered history of El Paso and the surrounding borderlands—how people, cultures, and economies have moved through this region for generations, shaping the Southwest in ways that often go unrecognized. More than anything, this is a conversation about people and place. By following the lives of five families across generations, Jazmine brings a human lens to a complicated history, one that is rich with resilience, identity, and connection, and that adds real depth to our understanding of the American West.

This is a thoughtful conversation with a very smart, purpose-driven author that adds some much needed historical context to this current moment in American culture. I think you'll enjoy it and learn a lot.

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Jazmine Ulloa
El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory
Full episode notes and links: https://mountainandprairie.com/jazmine-ulloa

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Mountain & Prairie is listener supported via Patreon, and brought to you with support from the Central Grasslands Roadmap, The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, North Bridger Bison, and the Old Salt Co-op for their generous sponsorship.

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TOPICS DISCUSSED:

0:00 - Introducing Jazmine Ulloa and highlighting Good News and book recs
5:47 - How Jazmine ended up in El Paso
12:34 - Pursuing journalism as a career
18:19 - Going to the border for the story
23:02 - Getting to the New York Times
27:09 - Jazmine's speciality
30:27 - Dealing with trauma
32:38 - Getting into Jazmine's book
36:01 - Fear of the unknown
36:55 - 2019 El Paso shooting
41:29 - Seeing history reflected in the present
46:56 - Leaning into the complexity
49:33 - Focusing on family
54:20 - Knowing her hometown better?
57:44 - Time management at its best
1:00:24 - Book recs
1:02:34 - Wrapping up

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	El Paso is the American city that most tells us about our nation's immigration battles today,
0:06.0	how it has, how it's been this gateway, this critical gateway into the land that would become the United States long before Ellis Island ever existed.
0:15.0	And it's been this, you know, portal for Mexican and Chinese laborers and black cowboys and white entrepreneurs, you know,
0:21.7	who have built the Southwest as we know it.
0:27.7	This is the Mountain and Prairie podcast. I'm Ed Robertson. My guest today is Jasmine Uyoa.
0:34.1	Jasmine is a national reporter who covers immigration for the New York Times.
0:38.6	She's also the author of the new book El Paso, five families and 100 years of blood, migration, race, and memory.
0:47.0	Born and raised in El Paso, Jasmine brings both a journalist discipline and a personal connection to the story,
0:53.9	weaving together archival
0:55.2	research, oral histories, and her own family background to explore how this border community
1:00.8	has shaped the broader story of the United States.
1:04.3	What makes Jasmine's work especially compelling is the path she took to get here.
1:08.6	She started reporting as a teenager, crossing the border with her
1:11.7	grandmother to interview families affected by violence, real high-stakes journalism while she was
1:17.5	still in high school. From there, she worked her way up through local papers across Texas,
1:22.9	covering crime, courts, and immigration, eventually moving into national political reporting and earning
1:28.9	her role at the New York Times. It's a career built the old-fashioned way, curiosity, extreme
1:34.8	hard work, and a clear sense of purpose. In this conversation, Jasmine and I focus on the long,
1:40.5	layered history of El Paso and the surrounding borderlands, how people, cultures, and
1:45.6	economies have moved through this region for generations, shaping the southwest in ways that
1:50.8	often go unrecognized. More than anything, this is a conversation about people and place.
1:56.8	By following the lives of five families across generations, Jasmine brings a human lens to a complicated history, one that's rich with resilience, identity, and connection, and that adds real depth to our understanding of the American West.
	...

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