Sacha pfeiffer, host:

Earlier in today’s program, we heard how immigrants are being deported in countries for which they have no connection. This is an important part of President Trump’s immigration policy and his goal of increasing exile. What do you like to cover a rapidly moving like immigation, complex, often covering the controversial issue? For our weekly reporter’s notebook, my colleague Scott Detro came to know.

Scott Ditro, Byline: Ever since he returned to the White House, President Trump provoked government efforts to do well on one of his signature campaign, which he was the greatest collective exile in American history, “a nationwide rift on a nationwide action on illegal immigration to call him the biggest collective exile in American history.”

(Soundbight of collected recording)

President Donald Trump: By the time the sun sets tomorrow evening, the attack of our boundaries must have come to a stop, and all the illegal boundaries are the exaggeration …

(Cheering)

Trump: … Will, in some form, will be on the way to go back to your home.

Detrow: Immigration raids are across the country – Los Angeles, New York City and even in places like Puerto Rico. Thousands of people have been captured, resulting in congestion, as well as various detention centers in therapy and food decrease.

Jasmine Garcade, Byline: What we are seeing is actually in custody, is in custody, in custody, and the number of exile cannot be maintained.

Detrow: This is NPR correspondent Jasmine Garcade. She is the most affected by these impressions on immigrants and communities, and she is also talking with the people held in the preventive centers who were experiencing the congestion after the number of arrests by the ICE, immigration and customs enforcement agency. Garsad says that there is a trend that she keeps a close watch on the children who have separated from their parents.

GarsD: Many of them are American citizens. I am facing an entire generation of young Americans, who suddenly are not only blaming themselves, but have become the head of the house because mother or father or both have gone.

Detrow: When we talked, she was about to return to Florida for another reporting trip. This is a state Garsd has returned again and again in the last few months. She says that it is the key to understanding what the future of immigration enforcement can see.

GarsD: Florida, such as, is like a laboratory for immigration policy. This is like ground zero for immigration enforcement. In my experience, what happens in Florida, later the Trump is going to nationwide in administration, and that’s why I am going back.

Detrow: I asked Jasmine and started our weekly reporter’s notebook conversation about what she was listening to immigrant communities in the state.

GarsD: Ever since the Trump administration took over, Florida has promised to place itself as a national immigration crackdown efforts. And you can really see that in recent tasks, whether it is deputation of highway patrolling for immigration enforcement or the so -called crocodile Alkatraz is formed, and the result has been a total paralysis in many immigrant communities. I have spent time in a community just outside Tampa, where everyone knows someone who is detained, and it is almost completely male who is detained while driving to work, and rapidly, they are men who do not have criminal records. And so I have recently spent a lot of time in Florida in communities where it has been left behind women and children who have been left behind because men have been detained.

Detrow: One of the stories you mentioned was about the pastor who was unspecified and was in custody for months. What can you tell us about that story?

GarsD: A few months ago, I found a tip about a pastor, which had no criminal record and who was sitting in a detention center in Florida for a few months. His name is Maurilio Ambrosio, and his story is actually a sign of some trends that we are starting to see in immigration enforcement. He was in America for 30 years. For the last 13, he has been checking in with immigration. Therefore Ambrosio, which is called the Removal of Stay, means that you examine the immigration authorities at least once a year. You tell them that you have no criminal history, you have employment. And so he did this for 13 years. And in the 13th year, he got up.

And this is – you know, these immigration check -in, are being arrested on them or in courts, this is something we are starting to see a lot. We are starting to see by looking at immigrants without criminal records. What actually stood about Ambrosio – this is the first time I found a sense of a family that was essentially torn. And family, all children – these are four or five children – children are American citizens. And suddenly the breadwiner, the head of the house, had gone. He has been deported since then. He was deported …

Detrow: Yes.

Garcade: … a few weeks ago. And he has gone. And this means that children have really had to take steps and become the head of the house. And this is something that I am often watching fast.

Detrow: Jasmine, I want to underline the said thing just a moment ago because you are listening to President Trump and Administration officials, very often, we are focusing on criminals, and they use a lot of other conditions for people with criminal records. This is an example that you have told that a person is not a criminal, there is no criminal record of him and as you said, all were checking the right boxes.

Garsd: Yes, and it is rapidly common. I mean, there are about 60,000 migrants in immigration right now. NPR, our team – we crunch the numbers, and it is about 72% out of those 60,000 or therefore migrants have not been blamed for any crime – 72%. And, you know, the Homeland Security Department has said that no more, the number of guilty criminals is very high, but they have not released the number to show it. So we are going through numbers that we have in custody till 7 July. And we also found that from last month to this month, people have increased without criminal convicts who are being detained. And so, as you said, there is the rhetoric that we are the worst and worst criminals, but the number does not show it.

Detrow: Jasmine, you and I talked to one or the presidential election within a week, and it really got stuck in my mind because the attention of that conversation was talking to a lot of immigrants – immigrant communities, people here in the country and illegally, who voted for Donald Trump or supported Donald Trump or were happy to win Donald Trump. Looking at all this, I am wondering how people are feeling about this about half away through this first year in the office?

Garsd: So I get emails from the audience who say, I still support it. This is the correct course of action. We need a campaign of exile on a large scale. I am also running fast among those who voted for Trump, but what I say, I did not vote enough for it. 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 a neighbor. His name is Greg Johns. And he told me, you know, I voted for President Trump. I support the exile of criminals, but I do not support it. And this is not just anecdote. There is a new gallop pole that indicates that a record-high 79% of American adults say that immigration is a good thing for the country, and 62% rejects how this administration is handling the issue of immigration.

Detrow: I want to talk about what you have earlier mentioned. This large -scale detention center opened in Florida has been given so much attention. What can you tell us about it? What have you learned about it as you report on it?

Garsd: Therefore I am hearing from sources, whether they are lawyers, whether they are families of people who are detained in Crocodile Alkatraz, as they call it, who have told me a couple of really harassed things. First, the conditions are just frightening. I mean, we are hearing about water scarcity, congestion and lawyers who have told me about extreme difficulty in reaching their customers. I had a lawyer who told me that he felt that his client had almost disappeared in the system.

I mean, I think it is also important to mention that immigration prevention centers across the country have congested and similar conditions, and this is something about which we are actually reporting a lot. For months, I have been listening to the report of widespread viral infection, food deficiency. I called me many prisoners and said, we did not eat today, and people…

Detrow: Not at all.

GarsD: No, because either the food was spoiled, or, you know, there was a shortage. Mostly that the food deteriorated and therefore – that they did not eat that day. I had a lawyer who told me about one of his customers who was at the Chrome Detention Center and for some time, eating a cup of white rice a day.

Detrow: Jasmine, I want to take a step back because you are talking about it, you know, in this conversation that you are saying during all the things you are saying. But what is the best way to think about it? What is the way you are seeing, big picture, how all these changes, how to change all these, how is all these frightening rhetoric, changing immigrant communities only in the United States?

GarsD: As time passes and this rift continues, what I am seeing is a lot of fear and paralysis in communities. And, you know, for example, we were talking about congestion in custody centers, right? And one of the groups who called me the most to suggest me about the terms, Cubans and Cubans who – many of whom had voted for it, but once, what you know, you are attached to the conversation, said, okay, I felt that it was not to impress me, I felt that they were coming to that other person. And I think, you know, it has now moved in a way, and I think what I am seeing is a really intensive fear. And yes, I don’t think I ever – I have now covered the immigration for a few years, and I don’t think I have ever heard questions to so many people, should I leave now? Should I be self-reliant?

Detrow: It was Jasmine Garcade that covers immigration for NPR.

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