Caleb Hampton
Caleb Hampton is an award-winning journalist, editor and photographer from California. He has reported on immigration and education for national publications such as The New York Times and The Guardian. He currently works as an assistant editor for Ag Alert, where he covers California agriculture.
In 2020, his reporting on the deportations of more than a dozen Iranian students from U.S. airports led to a congressional inquiry and an investigation into the Department of Homeland Security. The reporting was cited in lawsuits filed by Harvard University and the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 2021, Caleb was the first to report that the U.S. legal immigration system had all but collapsed as the pandemic, Trump-era policies and understaffing at consulates stranded hundreds of thousands of Americans’ family members abroad, where many faced yearslong waits for visa interviews. His story was followed by widespread news coverage and greater transparency from the Department of State about the unprecedented backlog.
From 2019-2022, Caleb reported on higher education as a staff reporter for The Davis Enterprise. Stories he broke for the local newspaper were picked up by numerous outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Sacramento Bee and CalMatters.
In 2018, his longform feature on proxy teaching in India was cited by government officials as they called for changes to the public education system.
Caleb won feature writing awards for that story and for a story about UC Davis soccer player Mika Sayfurahman, who started college the same month the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. The takeover forced Sayfurahman’s teammates on the Afghan women’s national team to flee the country.
Before becoming a journalist, Caleb lived and studied in Ghana for three years, where he completed a photography workshop and assisted photographer Nii Obodai.
Caleb has a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Davis, California, with his family.
Contact: calebmhampton@gmail.com