The National Association of Hispanic Journalists named ProPublica reporter Melissa Sanchez the recipient of its University of Florida Award in Investigative Journalism for her work on “Death on a Dairy Farm,” the first story in the series “America’s Dairyland,” co-reported with ProPublica engagement reporter Maryam Jameel.
The series examines the cruel and often inhumane conditions facing Wisconsin’s immigrant dairy farm workers. In the first story, Sanchez and Jameel tell a compelling story about a Nicaraguan immigrant child’s death on a Dane County farm in Wisconsin, the failed sheriff’s investigation that followed, and how this death represents a broader story about immigrant workers and their families on dairy farms in the Midwest.
When 8-year-old Jefferson Rodríguez was run over by a piece of farm equipment one night in 2019 on a Wisconsin dairy farm, his death was ruled an accident and the case was closed. Authorities concluded that the boy’s father, who was from Nicaragua, had been operating the machinery that killed him, and that’s how the media and English-speaking public came to understand Jefferson’s death.
Sanchez and Jameel decided to investigate what happened after learning from the Spanish-speaking community that there was more to the story. The reporting team revealed that another worker had accidentally run over the child with a 6,700-pound skid steer and that investigators had never questioned him. What’s more, they found that worker, and he admitted what he had done. They showed, too, how a deputy’s poor Spanish prompted authorities to wrongly blame the father. Finally, they spotlighted the systemic failures that left an immigrant child — a precocious boy whose deep Christian faith surprised his parents — living in a barn far from his Central American home.
Last November, elected officials in Dane County, Wisconsin, approved an $8 million fund for farmworker housing. The sheriff’s office there also drafted a proposed policy on how to respond to incidents involving residents with limited English proficiency, and it’s now working with the Justice Department on its first-ever written policy.
The vast majority of immigrant dairy workers, from Central America or Mexico, are undocumented, and many fear losing their jobs, livelihoods and homes if they speak with reporters. Sanchez and Jameel, both daughters of immigrants and fluent Spanish speakers, made it their mission to form a trusting relationship with workers. They interviewed more than 100 workers and found innovative ways to ensure their stories reached dairy workers and others in the communities where they worked and lived.
See a list of all NAHJ Ñ Award winners.
