Florida: The front line of Trump's immigration crackdown

0:00Since he returned to the White House, President Trump has ramped up government efforts to make good on one of his signature campaign promises, a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration to start what he calls, quote, the biggest mass deportation in U.S. history. By the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the invasion of our borders will have come to a halt and all the illegal border trespasses will in some form or another be on their way back home. Immigration raids are up all across the country in places like Los Angeles, New York City, and even Puerto Rico. Tens of thousands of people have been apprehended, resulting in overcrowding as well as shortages in medicine and food at various detention centers.

0:44Jasmine Garsd:we're seeing is this really big push to detain, detain, detain. And the number of deportations can't keep up. That's NPR correspondent Jasmine Garst. She's been reporting on immigrants and communities most impacted by these raids. And she's also been speaking with people held in those detention centers who are experiencing that overcrowding after record numbers of arrests by ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Garst says one trend that she has been keeping a close eye on is children who have been separated from their parents. So many of them are American citizens. I'm encountering a whole generation of young Americans who are suddenly having to not just fend for themselves, but become heads of households because mom or dad or both is gone.

1:30When we spoke, she was about to return to Florida for another reporting trip. It is a state Garst has returned to repeatedly over the past few months. She says it's the key to understanding what the future of immigration enforcement may look like.

1:43Jasmine Garsd:Florida, to me, is like this sort of laboratory for immigration policy. It's kind of ground zero for immigration enforcement. In my experience, what happens in Florida is going to happen nationwide later on in the Trump administration. And that's why I keep going back. Consider this. Florida is a state that has been defined by immigration over the past 60 years. Now people there are getting a firsthand look at the Trump administration's most aggressive immigration enforcement tactics.

2:20From NPR, I'm Scott Tetreault.

2:32It's Consider This from NPR. NPR correspondent Jasmine Garst has taken several reporting trips to Florida recently. It's a state seeing some of the most aggressive immigration enforcement since President Trump took office. I spoke to her right before she was set to depart on another reporting trip to the state, and I began by asking her what she's been hearing from immigrant communities there.

2:52Jasmine Garsd:Since the Trump administration took office, Florida has promised to position itself as spearheading the national immigration crackdown efforts. And you can really see that in recent actions, whether it's deputizing highway patrol for immigration enforcement or building the so-called alligator Alcatraz. And the result has been this total paralysis in many immigrant communities. I've spent time in one community right outside Tampa where everybody knows somebody who's been detained. And it's almost entirely men who've been detained while driving to work. And increasingly, it's men who don't have criminal records.

3:34Jasmine Garsd:And so a lot of my time in Florida lately has been spent in communities where it's women and children who have been left behind as the men get detained. One of the stories you reported on was about a pastor who was undocumented and in detention for months. What can you tell us about that story? A couple of months ago, I got a tip about a pastor who had no criminal record and who was sitting in a detention center in Florida for a couple of months. His name is Maurilio Ambrosio. And his story is really indicative of some trends that we're starting to see in immigration enforcement. He was in the U.S.

4:14Jasmine Garsd:for 30 years. For the last 13, he's been doing check-ins with immigration. So Ambrosio had what is called a stay of removal, which means that you check in at least once a year with immigration officials. You let them know you have no criminal history. You have employment. And so he did that for 13 years. And on the 13th year, he got picked up. And this is, you know, these immigration check-ins being arrested at them or at courts. That's something we're starting to see a lot of. We're starting to see an increase in immigrants without criminal records being detained. What really stood out about Ambrosio, it's the first time I kind of got this sense of a family that was essentially torn apart.

5:03Jasmine Garsd:And the family, which is all the kids, it's four or five kids, the children are American citizens. And suddenly the breadwinner, the head of household, was gone. He's been deported since, by the way. He was deported a few weeks ago. And he's gone. And what that has meant is that the children have had to really step up and become heads of household. And that's something I'm seeing increasingly often. Jasmine, I just want to underscore something you said a moment ago because you are hearing President Trump and administration officials say pretty frequently, we are focusing on the criminals. And they use a lot of other terms for people with criminal records.

5:43This is an example. you have reported out where somebody is not a criminal, has no criminal record, and like you said, had been checking the right boxes all along.

5:52Jasmine Garsd:Yes, and it's increasingly common. I mean, there are about 60 ,000 migrants in immigration detention right now. NPR, our team, we crunched the numbers, and it's about 72 percent of those 60 ,000 or so migrants have not been convicted of any crime, 72 percent. And, you know, the Department of Homeland Security disputes that and has said, no, the number of convicted criminals is far higher, but they haven't released the numbers to show it. So we're going by the numbers that we have of immigrants in detention as of July 7th. And we also found that from last month to this month, there's been an increase in people without criminal convictions who are being detained.

6:43Jasmine Garsd:And so, like you said, there's this rhetoric of we're getting the worst of the worst and the most heinous criminals, but the numbers don't show that. Jasmine, you and I talked within a week or so of the presidential election last fall, and it really stuck in my mind because the focus of that conversation was a lot of immigrants you were talking to, immigrant communities, people here in the country legally and illegally who voted for Donald Trump or supported Donald Trump or were happy to see Donald Trump win the White House. Given all of this, I'm wondering how halfway through this first year in office, how people like that are feeling about this.

7:24Jasmine Garsd:So I do get emails from listeners who say, I still support this. This is the right course of action. We need a campaign of mass deportations. I also am increasingly running into people who voted for Trump, but who say, I didn't quite vote for this. In fact, in the case of the pastor, of Pastor Maurilio Ambrosio, I spoke to his neighbors. Most of his neighbors in his area voted for President Trump. And, you know, I spoke to one neighbor, his name is Greg Johns, And he told me, you know, I did vote for President Trump. I do support the deportation of criminals, but I don't support this. And it's not just anecdotal.

8:07Jasmine Garsd:There's a new Gallup poll that indicates that a record high, 79 percent of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country and 62 percent disapprove of how this administration is handling the issue of immigration. I want to talk about something you briefly mentioned before. There has been so much attention on this massive detention center just opened in Florida. What can you tell us about it? What have you learned about it as you report on this? So I have been hearing from sources, whether it's lawyers, whether it's families of people who are detained in alligator Alcatraz, as they call it, who have told me a couple of really disturbing things.

8:52Jasmine Garsd:First of all, conditions are just horrific. I mean, we're hearing about lack of water, overcrowding, and lawyers who have told me of extreme difficulty in reaching their clients. I had one lawyer who told me that he felt that his client had virtually disappeared into the system. I mean, I think it's important to also mention that there's overcrowding and similar conditions in immigration detention centers across the country. And that's something we've really been reporting a lot about. For months, I've been hearing reports of, you know, widespread viral infections, lack of food. I've had many inmates call me and say, we didn't eat today.

9:39Jasmine Garsd:Not at all. No, because either the food went bad or, you know, there was a shortage. Mostly that the food went bad and so that they didn't eat that day. I had one lawyer who told me about a client of his who was at the Chrome Detention Center and who for some time was eating a cup of white rice a day. Jasmine, I want to take a step back because you've been talking about this, you know, kind of throughout all of all of the things you've been saying in this conversation. But what's the best way to think about it? What's the way that you've been seeing big picture, how all of these changes, how all of these crackdowns, how all of this frightening rhetoric is just changing immigrant communities in the United States?

10:19Jasmine Garsd:As time passes and this crackdown continues, what I'm seeing is a sense of a lot of fear and paralysis across communities. And, you know, for example, we were talking about overcrowding and detention centers, right? And one of the groups that most called me to give me tips about the conditions was Cubans and Cuban-Americans, many of whom voted for this. but who once, you know, you engage in conversation said, well, I didn't think it was going to affect me. I thought they were coming for that other person. And I think, you know, that's kind of shifted now. And I think what I'm seeing is a sense of really intense fear.

11:01Jasmine Garsd:And yeah, I don't think I've ever, I've covered immigration for a couple of years now. And I don't think I've ever heard so many people question, should I leave now? Should I self-deport? That was Jasmine Garz, who covers immigration for NPR. This episode was produced by Kiera Joachim. It was edited by Adam Rainey and Eric Westerbough. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan.

11:29It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.