Detention By Design

Latino USA

My Cultura, Futuro and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As recently as 1955, there were virtually no immigrants held in detention in the U.S. Today, the federal government holds tens of thousands each day, in 130 facilities across the country. But the story of how we got here did not start at the U.S.-Mexico border - it started on Florida’s shores, 50 years ago.

Through personal histories and meticulously compiled archival materials, Detention By Design will tell how the arrival of Haitian and Cuban migrants by boat in the 1970s and 1980s —and the crude experiments in small Florida jails that followed— shaped the immigration and detention system that we have in this country today. WLRN's Danny Rivero hosts.

This second episode of Detention By Design follows the revealing story of Abel Jean-Simon Zephyr, a Haitian who arrived in Miami by boat in 1973. He asked for political asylum, but authorities —caught flat-footed— paid the sheriff's office at remote Immokalee, Florida, to hold him and others at its tiny jail. It marked the miserable, and at times tragic, beginning of the modern immigration detention system.

Detention by Design is funded by The Shepard Broad Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hola Latino USA listener, it's Mariano Rosa.
0:11.7	Today we want to share an episode from a new podcast series that we're listening to.
0:16.9	It's called Detention by Design.
0:20.4	It's produced by Public Radio Station WLRN in Miami.
0:25.5	The podcast follows the beginnings of this country's immigration detention system right
0:31.5	in Florida.
0:33.5	70 years ago there were no immigrants held in detention in the United States, but then
0:39.4	Haitians began arriving at Florida's shores by boat, fleeing a violent dictatorship in their
0:45.5	country and everything changed.
0:49.0	We want to share with you episode two of Detention by Design.
0:54.5	The episode tells the story of Abel Jean Simon-Saphir when he arrived in the United States in 1973
1:03.7	by boat and then asked for asylum.
1:07.6	Host Danny Ribeiro takes us to that moment.
1:12.0	From WLRN News in Miami, this is Detention by Design.
1:16.6	I'm Danny Rivera.
1:18.7	What's the warning about this episode?
1:20.6	Is that it does contain a discussion about suicide?
1:24.3	If you or anyone you know needs help, you can reach the National Suicide Prevention
1:28.6	Lifeline by calling or texting the number 988.
1:33.3	That's 988.
1:39.6	At the end of the last episode, we met Abel Jean-Saphir.
1:43.8	With the age of 16, saw many friends around him getting arrested in the wave of political
	...

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