Jean Guerrero is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times focused on politics, U.S. Latinos and the American West. She is the author of the acclaimed investigative biography, Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Her first book, Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, won a PEN Literary Award and was named a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of NPR's Best Books.

She was an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Times between 2021 and 2024, when her commentary shaped debates about everything from the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election to the Latino vote. Her essays and investigative reporting have appeared in The Best American Essays 2019, Vanity Fair, Politico, The Nation, Wired, Jezebel, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, the 2022 Macmillan writing guide How To Write Anything and other publications. She is also a frequent guest on MSNBC, Democracy Now! and other national radio and TV news shows.

She covered the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration as an investigative reporter for public radio and TV from 2015 to 2021. Months before Trump’s family separations captured national attention, her early reporting on the practice for the PBS NewsHour was cited in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security signed by 75 members of Congress. She started her career at The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires as a foreign correspondent in Mexico and Central America, where she studied the structural forces that drive migration and displacement.

At USC, Guerrero leads the “Our Unsilencing” opinion commentary bootcamp, first launched at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab, to incubate the next generation of public intellectuals and uplift underrepresented voices in the opinion discourse.

Born and raised in San Diego, Guerrero draws on her cross-border upbringing to bridge divides and expand understanding of the forces shaping the Americas.