AILA Presents Jacob Soboroff of NBC/MSNBC with the 2019 Media Leadership Award

WASHINGTON, DC - The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) will recognize NBC/MSNBC's Jacob Soboroff with the 2019 Media Leadership Award, given to individuals whose efforts in the media most accurately depict immigration and immigrants. The award will be presented this week during AILA's Annual Conference in Orlando, FL.

Jacob Soboroff is a Los Angeles-based MSNBC Correspondent and Anchor who reports across NBC News and MSNBC. In 2018, he spent months reporting from the U.S.-Mexico border on President Trump's immigration policies and was one of the first journalists to tour two South Texas facilities housing migrant children separated from their families under the administration's "zero tolerance" policy. Amid the separation crisis, Soboroff hosted a Dateline NBC special report, "The Dividing Line," a deep-dive into the separation policy and the realities of life along both sides of the border.

Also in 2018, Jacob reported on the real-world effects of climate change from 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle for the Today Show series Top of the World, and ahead of the midterm elections, he explored the issues Americans cared about most in What Matters?, a Today Show and MSNBC series. What Matters? With Jacob Soboroff aired as a MSNBC documentary special the weekend before Election Day.

During the campaign, Variety said Jacob's "dispatches from around America have the vibe of a hipper, latter-day Charles Kuralt - commiserating with a hover boat driver in the Everglades and an ice fisherman atop a lake in New Hampshire, or riding a bike with an immigrant 'dreamer' to get her to confide how it feels to meet other immigrant children on the campaign trail." Before joining MSNBC in 2015, he hosted projects for a variety of platforms including Vanity Fair, YouTube, Participant Media, The Huffington Post, MTV, AMC, NBC, CNN, PBS and NPR.

Jacob has been a longtime advocate of protecting the right to vote through the Why Tuesday? organization and has given a TED Talk about election reform. He also serves on the associates board of the education-focused nonprofit City Year Los Angeles and is a service ambassador for Points of Light.