ICE Sweeps Georgia

As immigration enforcement reshapes communities across America, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was among the first to capture its human cost through this viscerally intimate social video series. Produced by four reporters and more than a dozen video producers, ICE Sweeps Georgia uses vertical video, body camera footage, and first-person perspective to place viewers inside one of the most consequential stories unfolding nationwide. What began with stories about a Trump-voting family whose son was detained and a Georgia-born man wrongfully arrested as an “unauthorized alien” grew into a mosaic of perspectives on federal power colliding with local lives, garnering 2.8 million views. The newsroom accomplished this in the same year it published its last print edition after 157 years in circulation. Rather than repurpose print coverage for social platforms, the team deployed social video from the ground up as an essential journalism tool in the digital age. For masterfully merging time-honored reporting with social-native storytelling techniques to show the human toll of immigration enforcement, ICE Sweeps Georgia wins a Peabody Award.