Emir Olivares has worked since 2003 as a reporter at La Jornada, one of Mexico's most important daily newspapers, and is particularly dedicated to topics such as human rights violations, migration, corruption and foreign affairs. After he exposed drug deals tied to organized crime on the campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City in June 2017, he received threats that he would be assassinated if he continued reporting on the issue. He was immediately pulled from covering anything related to the university, after 10 years on the beat. Even so, in December 2019, his apartment was broken into and Olivares was again threatened in connection with the earlier reporting. He was forced to leave his home, just before the pandemic hit, and spent more than a year unable to write under his name at La Jornada as a protection measure. To this day, Mexican authorities have not made any arrests in either incident, and Olivares remains in a government security program with the protection of bodyguards.