Maria came to the U.S. illegally with her mother when she was a little girl…so they could meet up with her father, who was working in the country legally. When StoryCorps came to Jackson last summer, Maria told her son Jorden about how she ended up in Idaho.
The story of 20th century Sheridan immigrant and entrepreneur Zarif Khan resurfaced in the last several years. After a 2016 New Yorker story that detailed Khan's life, University of Iowa jazz studies professor and musician John Rapson was inspired to tell Khan's uniquely American story along with composer Danyel Gaglione.
The community of Gillette has seen tension recently with plans for a Quran burning and protests over Gillette’s first mosque. Writer and Pulitzer Prize winner Kathryn Schulz heard this and wondered how a Muslim community came to be in coal mining Wyoming.
The backlog in U.S. immigration courts is now over 850,000 cases long. People can wait years for their hearings. And that can be a long time to pay for a lawyer and to make appearances in court. Both of these things can be much harder for immigrants living in rural and mountainous parts of the West.
