Eileen Truax is a veteran journalist specialized in migration and politics. She’s a Knight-Wallace Fellow 2019-2020 at the University of Michigan and content director of the International Migration Journalism Symposium, an annual event in Mérida, Spain. She lives in Ann Arbor. 

Truax was born in Mexico City, where she was a political reporter and a Congress correspondent. In 2004, she moved to Los Angeles. For seven years, she worked for La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the US. 

In recent years, her work has been published in several media outlets in the US, Latin America and Spain, such as The Washington Post, Vice, El Universal, Americas Quarterly, The New York Times ES, Newsweek ES, Gatopardo magazine and 5W magazine, among others. 

She’s the author of three books: “Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight for their American Dream” (Beacon Press 2015); “We Built the Wall. How the US keeps out asylum seekers from Mexico, Central America and Beyond” (Verso 2018), and “How does it feel to be unwanted. Stories of resistance and resilience from Mexicans living in the United States” (Beacon Press 2018). All have been published in Spanish. Her work has been included in six other books. 

Truax has a B.A. in Social Communication and an M.A. in Communication and Politics (Summa Cum Laude). She has been a fellow with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ); the International Women Media Foundation (IWMF), and the Ibero American Foundation for New Journalism (FNPI). She has also been a board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).