KPBS Investigates KPBS

An architect has a radical idea for San Diego's oldest freeway, SR-163, which cuts through Balboa Park. An environmental justice activist dreams of someday reconnecting her community that was divided by Interstate 5. If San Diego is serious about its goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035, how will our relationship with freeways have to change?

The American freeway is born in a time of intense optimism around the promise of the automobile. President Eisenhower sees the country's dilapidated road network as a barrier to economic growth and national defense. Jacob Dekema, the father of San Diego's freeway network, sees freeways as lifesavers. How did our optimism blind us to the freeway's dark side?
Magic Highway USA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo4-rYNGEwE&

When pandemic-inspired protections for homeowners and renters expired, renters especially have become vulnerable to evictions in San Diego’s hot housing market. In this second part of a two part series on evictions, KPBS Race and Equity reporter follow

The pandemic inspired a slate of local, state and national eviction bans, and other protections for homeowners and renters to keep people housed. But those protections are going away, leaving renters especially vulnerable to eviction as the San Diego rent

Today on KPBS Investigates, Aaron Harvey’s journey from wrongful gang charges to UC Berkeley graduation.

In the summer of 2014, a swarm of police arrested Aaron Harvey near where he was living outside Las Vegas. Harvey is from San Diego, and was charged as a test case by San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis using a law that had never been used before.

It said someone could be charged for conspiracy for gang shootings, even if that person had nothing to do with the shootings at all. That was the case for Harvey. He was charged because he was in social media pictures wearing gang colors and making gang signs.

A judge dismissed the charges against him, but not before he spent seven months in jail.

Now, Harvey has done something that when he was in jail seemed like an impossible dream: graduating from UC Berkeley.

This KPBS Investigates episode was reported and written by Claire Trageser. Emily Jankowski is the director of sound design. Kinsee Morlan is Podcast Coordinator. This episode was edited by Megan Burke. Lisa Morissette is operations manager and John Decker is the interim associate general manager of content.

Stay tuned for more episodes of KPBS Investigates right here in your podcast feed.

Increasing numbers of asylum seekers are being allowed to enter the United States. But with the asylum system still severely curtailed, thousands remain stuck in dangerous conditions in Tijuana.

KPBS reporter Max Rivlin-Nadler has been following the story for months. His reporting is featured in a new special report for the “KPBS Investigates” and “Port of Entry” podcasts.

In the episode, Rivlin-Nadler follows the painfully long wait many asylum seekers have had to endure, simply for a chance at finding refuge in the U.S. It outlines America's critically damaged asylum system at the U.S. Mexico border by introducing you to the people on the ground, both the migrants living in the dangerous refugee camps in Tijuana and the activists and lawyers trying to help them.