El Paso native, NYT reporter visits high school that sparked her writing career

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — Author, New York Times reporter and El Paso Native Jazmine Ulloa visited her old high school, hoping to inspire a new generation of writers with her new book, which tells the history of immigration in the Borderland.

As part of the El Paso Independent School District’s new initiative, “It Starts with a Book,” Burges High School in East El Paso hosted Ulloa, who spoke to students about her non-fiction book and her professional journey, crediting Burges for her career.

The book is titled “El Paso: Five Families and One Hundred Years of Blood, Migration, Race, and Memory.”

Author, NYT Reporter and El Paso Native Jazmine Ulloa visits her alma mater, Burges High School, to present her new non-fiction book and inspire a new generation of writers. March 10, 2026. Credit: KFOX14/CBS4

In it, Ulloa tells the history of the Borderland through the stories of five families who migrated to the U.S. through El Paso in the last 100 years– history that Ulloa said is essential to understanding today’s national debates over immigration and identity.

“To understand Latino and Mexican identity today, to understand American identity today, you need to know this history,” Ulloa said.

Ulloa describes El Paso as a place where people can see “the ebb and flow of workers, largely Mexican and Mexican American and Latino workers who have helped build this country, who have helped build the Southwest, the American Southwest.”

Ulloa stated she started thinking about writing the book in the Summer of 2019, after she reported on the Aug. 3, 2019, Walmart shooting, when domestic terrorist Patrick Crusius drove to El Paso and killed 23 people, vowing to stop the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“It was a tragedy that hit really close to home,” Ulloa said, adding that it happened close to Burges High and affected people close to her, like her best friend, whose father was at the store that day.

“One of the hardest assignments I had ever had to cover,” Ulloa said.

At the time, Ulloa was a national political reporter for the Boston Globe and watched her hometown become a backdrop for national battles over immigration.

Ulloa said some people were calling the city the Ellis Island of the Southwest, or the New Ellis Island,” but described scenes of migrants “getting penned up at the border, under the border bridges,” and “children getting separated at the border.”

Ulloa said,

It’s here in El Paso and in this history that you can see that there is no such thing as an invasion of, a Latino invasion of the United States because Latinos and Mexican Americans have always been part of this country’s identity.

Back at her alma mater, Ulloa said returning as a published author felt “incredibly surreal.”

“I didn’t think this was possible,” Ulloa said. “I never even really thought I would write a book,” she added, before reflecting on the importance of the journalism instruction she received at Burgess.

Ulloa said one of her earliest mentors and teachers was Patricia Monroe.

“It was under her that I first started reporting on the Juarez femicides when I was 15,” Ulloa said.

Ulloa said Monroe taught students “to write clear and sharp and to ask tough questions and to always be seeking out different perspectives because the more perspectives you can get into an article and a story, the closer you can reach the truth.”

El Paso native, NYT reporter visits high school that sparked her writing career

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