From the Center for Investigative Reporting in PRX, this is Reveal. I'm Al Eton.

The other week, Reveal reporter Laura Morrell did something a lot of us are doing these days.

She made a video call, but she didn't use Zoom or FaceTime or House Party.

She was using a video visitation app to connect to a group of men

at the Pine Prairie Immigration Detention Center in Louisiana.

The app's name is Getting Out, which is almost too fitting.

Not only is it one of the few windows to the outside world for many immigrant detainees,

today they were using it to hold a kind of protest press conference

and getting out is exactly what they were demanding.

Hola.

On the screen were men in white t-shirts with gray sweaters,

packed into a tiny dorm lined with bunk beds.

And they were holding up these white blankets

because they don't have access to paper to put together regular signs

you'd see at a protest.

The blanket signs were washed out by the bright fluorescent lights,

so they took turns reading them to the screen.

Please help us, we're human beings, they said.

Someone help us, someone hear us.

We don't want to die locked up of COVID-19.

There are more than two million people in prisons, jails,

and detention centers across the United States.

...