Niraj Warikoo

Niraj Warikoo is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, where he often writes about immigration and religion. He has won several first-place SPJ (Society of Professional Journalists) Detroit awards in recent years, including two in 2019 for his work covering immigration. He traveled to Mexico and southern Texas over the past year to write about the effects of deportation and immigration enforcement. Warikoo recently broke stories about the operations of a fake university in metro Detroit created by ICE that drew national attention and prompted a response from some members of Congress. He became the religion reporter at the Detroit Free Press in 2008, writing on the region's diverse faith communities, from evangelicals to Orthodox Christians to Jewish denominations. He has covered Arab-American and Muslim-American issues for 20 years, writing about the impact of the U.S. war on terrorism in Michigan, such as the use of undercover informants and the FBI's shooting death of a Detroit imam. Warikoo has spoken at the annual conventions of IRE, AAJA, RNA, SAJA, and in 2018 on a plenary at the American Academy of Religion. A native of Pennsylvania, he graduated from Columbia University's College with a B.A. and Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism with a M.S. Reach him at nwarikoo@freepress.com or Twitter @nwarikoo