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The New Yorker Radio Hour
One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention
00:34:01
In 2025, ICE began detaining people at immigration hearings, an unprecedented step. The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer shares the story of one detainee whose life was turned upside down.
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- [00:40]
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Do you have a business idea? Well, Shopify is here to take that little light bulb going off above your head right now and turn it into reality. Everything you need to start selling is included and ready to go. From day one, I'm cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein and I thought I was intimidated by anything having to do with business and or the Internet. But Shopify is so simple and intuitive that even a Luddite scribbler like me found my way around. I click start my trial and I see these friendly little pop up buttons. Add your first product, choose your store design and then over in the corner, ask anything. So I do. I type in prints because that's what I want to sell and I get all these great questions immediately. Well, what's the image?
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- [03:13]
WNYC Studios Announcer
the New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC and the New Yorker.
- [03:22]
Jonathan Blitzer
Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Jonathan Blitzer. I'm a staff writer at the New Yorker. This is a special episode of our program today. I've covered immigration for more than a decade, and I think it's pretty clear that immigration is the defining political issue of our time, beyond all the other disruptions of the Trump administration. When Trump launched his 2016 campaign, he blamed Mexico for sending rapists, drug dealers and criminals across the border. There was the Muslim ban, family separation, a whole host of radical actions. But the current term has made the first one seem almost quaint. Trying to overturn birthright citizenship, racially profiling U.S. citizens, jailing tens of thousands of immigrants in appalling conditions. And then there's been nearly two dozen shootings by immigration agents, at least six of them fatal to date. I could go on and on. The question of who has a right to be in the United States is absolutely central to our country right now. In the second part of this episode, I'm going to speak with a Democrat and a Republican in Congress about how voters are receiving Trump's immigration policies and how that may affect the midterms. But first, I'm going to tell you a story about a guy I met here in New York, a refugee from guinea in West Africa. His name is Alsani. Alsani was early in the process of applying for asylum in the United States when He walked into 26 Federal Plaza in June 2025. It's a big federal office building in lower Manhattan with an immigration court on the 12th floor. This is the building where you might have heard an army veteran started a fire last week as a protest against ice, but Alsani was there a year ago. Alsani is his first name. He asked me not to use his last name.
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Alsani
Yeah. At the beginning, I wasn't scared at all, because when I first went, there were a lot of people there. Everyone was busy with their own situation. So it wasn't nothing concerning to me,
- [05:24]
Jonathan Blitzer
he was doing exactly what someone in his situation is supposed to do. He was seeking asylum from persecution back home in guinea and had been in the US For a little over a year. He had a room in the Bronx and was learning his way around New York City. It was all new. And Alsini didn't know what to make of some of the horror stories he was hearing about the Trump administration. But choosing to do things the right way, it gave him a sense of
- [05:50]
Alsani
confidence because I had not done anything wrong. There was no reason for anything bad to happen to me.
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Jonathan Blitzer
The meeting's short. The judge schedules another hearing so that Alsini can begin gathering the evidence for his asylum application. And a few minutes later, he leaves the courtroom holding a document with the date when he's supposed to return. He's standing by the elevator when six agents come up to him.
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Alsani
They were not wearing proper uniforms, but they also had something written on its eyes. They had face mask. Right after I came out. Then they grabbed me.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Alsani's short and skinny, five' five, with dark skin and short dreadlocks. He's 28 years old, and in June of 2025, he spoke next to no English in many of our meetings and interpreters helping us out.
- [06:49]
Alsani
I told them no, I wasn't gonna go with them because I had just seen the judge. So one of them actually grabbed my bag and said, if I don't come with them, they will do bad thing to me.
- [07:02]
Jonathan Blitzer
This wasn't the first time Alsini had been accosted by government agents. He fled guinea in 2023 after he was arrested at a political protest and beaten so badly that he suffered memory loss in New York. When the ICE agents grabbed him, he was terrified.
- [07:17]
Alsani
So I was resisting at first, but they just pushed me inside the elevator and pinned me down and then put the handcuff on me.
- [07:28]
Jonathan Blitzer
You might have seen videos of people being arrested just like this at 26 Federal Plaza in New York. This is one of the many hallways in lower Manhattan where mass immigration agents have been apprehending people outside of their routine immigration court check ins. It's been happening this sort of footage exploded about a year ago because ICE was doing something it had never really attempted before, picking people off when they showed up to immigration court. Alsani was a case in point. He thought he was just seeing an immigration judge, that he'd be back in the Bronx by the end of the day. What was going through your mind while you were in the elevator?
- [08:05]
Alsani
I said to myself, you're gonna be arresting me, and you're most likely gonna be sending me back to my home country. So I was very concerned about that. But then I said to myself, if that were to happen, I would rather be detained here or even killed here. Don't be sent back to where it had come from.
- [08:30]
Jonathan Blitzer
I cover immigration for the New Yorker. And quite frankly, I've been scrambling to document everything the current administration has done over the last 18 months. It has made radical changes to the US immigration system, upending the lives of immigrants across the country. And these major policy shifts are getting overshadowed by news of immigration agents shooting and killing people on the streets of American cities. But more than anything else, what I see happening is that the president is trying to sabotage the system of legal immigration, and that is making the country a much more hostile place for immigrants. President Trump has canceled the existing legal status of hundreds of thousands of people. Our nation's promise to be a place of refuge for the persecuted is anathema to this administration. It wants to end that promise once and for all. Arresting people in immigration court is unprecedented. Had Alsini arrived in the US A year or two earlier, he would have left the courtroom that day and returned to the Bronx, just like he expected. Instead, he found himself handcuffed in an elevator headed to the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE has a field office. Were you put in, like, a cell? Were there other people in that cell with you?
- [09:51]
Alsani
Yes, we were in the room. There were more than 60 of us in that room. I was there for two days. You couldn't lay because there was no space to lay down for you to sleep. You will have to sit down, and they will give us some water, but they will also give us some cookies. That's what we had for food.
- [10:11]
Jonathan Blitzer
This ICE field office is not supposed to hold anyone for longer than 12 hours. But last summer, ICE was arresting so many people from the immigration court and from elsewhere around the city that the field office was jam packed. In fact, more than a thousand people have been held there since January 2025. Alsini had no idea what was happening. Why was he being held? How long would it last? Agents kept Pressuring him to sign things. He's smart and canny, but he never really learned to read or write. And in any case, the documents were in English. He refused to sign them. And good thing, too, because some of them, it turns out, could have got him sent back to Guinea. Alsini didn't have a lawyer. There was no one for him to call. Could you communicate with other people who were in the room with you?
- [10:59]
Alsani
Yes. There were many Fulani speakers. And so we would talk, and right there, I actually saw many who had had signed document saying they would rather be sent back because they didn't want to be in that situation.
- [11:15]
Jonathan Blitzer
Two days later, after watching more people come and go, Alsini heard his name called. He and some other men were taken out of the building again. Someone handed him a document he couldn't read.
- [11:26]
Alsani
We were shackled. They said we were all being taken back to our home country. But then once we came out, I was taken to a separate direction.
- [11:37]
Jonathan Blitzer
Eight people are loaded into a van. It's nighttime. They drive for hours through the dark. And in the early hours of the morning, they pull up near a jail in the middle of Pennsylvania. They're at ICE's Moshannon Valley Processing Center. Alsani will spend the next six months at Moshannon. So we're on the corner of Marcy Avenue and Hooper street in Williamsburg outside of this beautiful old church, and we go down these stairs into the basement of the church, and that's where this law clinic has its offices.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
Hello.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Hi, Heather. Good to see you. Heather Axford is the director of Central American Legal Assistance, known as kala. She radiates the kind of gentle assuredness that helps when she's dealing with skeptical judges and nervous clients.
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Heather Axford
So the office opened in the mid-80s, but it's sort of expanded through the years.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Yeah. So we're, like, walking into. There's, like, a few desks. The ceilings, I have to say, are very low.
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Heather Axford
I know. I'm so sorry. And, like, even more, watch out for like the beams.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Calla is in a warren of offices in the basement of the Transfiguration Church. It's been here since the 1980s. Desks are tucked in every corner with papers piled high. Lawyers take calls in English and Spanish. Heather has represented thousands of clients during the first Trump administration. The advice was, file your case and start the legal process to regularize your status.
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Heather Axford
You spend, you know, for me, almost 20 years telling asylum seekers, go to all your appointments, go to court. Tell the truth, get your proof. And I took for granted that implicit in that is, court will be safe and you will be heard. And last year corrected that for me. Right.
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Jonathan Blitzer
What has most shocked you?
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Heather Axford
I think it's the. How lawless it is. It's like an animus against due process. Right. The. The law is as we declare it. Right. Makes it really hard as an attorney advising people, because I can advise people as to what the law is, but that's increasingly at odds with what their experience will be.
- [13:59]
Jonathan Blitzer
We know where this shift started. Late In May of 2025, the White House was angry that the government wasn't deporting more people faster. So top officials set a target for ICE. 3,000 arrests a day nationwide, well beyond what the agency was capable of. A week after that, ICE appears to have given agents the green light to. To start arresting people at immigration courts. The administration also issued a directive to immigration judges telling them to dismiss cases on the spot without hearing evidence or putting decisions in writing. The idea was to set people up. Someone shows up for court, the judge dismisses the case straight away. ICE officers are waiting outside to detain and deport them.
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Heather Axford
The first couple days, people didn't understand what was happening.
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Progressive Insurance Announcer
Right.
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Heather Axford
And you would even have people being like, oh, yeah, dismiss my case, Great. But then pretty quickly, people were educated. I jumped in on a case after. After the gentleman had been detained, and he was like, I had my proof. I'm like, telling the judge, no, don't dismiss my case. Look, I've got this proof. I've got these things to show you, and it doesn't matter.
- [15:07]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsani is caught up in all of this. And after two days in a holding cell with virtually no food, he's sent to a detention center in Pennsylvania. He's desperate to find legal help, and he comes across a list of pro bono law offices. It's alphabetical. Kala is near the top. He calls the number, and in his very limited English, says he's from Guinea. Kala mainly works with Central Americans. But as he's explaining his situation, one of the staff attorneys, Andrea Nunes, hears his last name and recognizes where he's from.
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Andrea Nunes
When I heard the last name, I was like, I bet he's a Fulani guy from guinea, and I bet he's got a killer case.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Andrea worked with Fulani people before she was at Cala. She knows about the government violence that followed a coup in guinea in 2021.
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Andrea Nunes
He sounded like he didn't have a lot of hope, and he sounded really overwhelmed.
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Heather Axford
Mm.
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Jonathan Blitzer
So you guys have this follow up conversation with an interpreter?
- [16:00]
Andrea Nunes
Yes.
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Jonathan Blitzer
Is that when you Start to really get a kind of fuller command of the details of his case. You must, like, your lawyer brain must be going now, and you must be thinking, wow, this guy's actually got a pretty strong asylum claim.
- [16:12]
Andrea Nunes
Such a good claim. Such a good claim.
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Jonathan Blitzer
You're smiling as you say that. I see the fire in your eye.
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Andrea Nunes
Cause you're like, that's what I mean.
- [16:20]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsini's claim is so strong because he's been subjected to violent and clear cut political persecution. In 2023, he was at an anti government protest when a group of state security agents arrested him. They beat him unconscious. He woke up hours later in a jail cell covered in blood. He was held for about a week, and before he could leave, the agents took his photograph and threatened him if they saw him at another protest, they'd kill him.
- [16:48]
Andrea Nunes
Claims that are so strong that you were tortured in state custody after you went to a political protest, a peaceful political protest. Oh, my gosh. Like, that's what people think of when they think of asylum. Like people who don't know very much about it. Yeah, yeah. It's like, so simple. But you know, unfortunately, that no matter how strong your claim is, if you don't have representation, it's so hard to win by yourself, especially if you're detained. Because how can you call your family in guinea to get documents if you're detained in the us?
- [17:19]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsani and Andrea spend almost three months putting together the evidence for his asylum case. He shares the details of his story, and then Andrea tries to run down the evidence. That means calling Alsini's sister and mother back in guinea so they can work the bureaucracy there to get key documents, medical records, witness statements. All the while, Alsani is stuck in Moshannon, where he lives in a room with men from all over the world, each of them in some kind of limbo.
- [17:46]
Alsani
We were about 30 people in the dorm, but each person has their own bed. And then we had about three TVs, and we could also go outside, play soccer, play basketball.
- [18:00]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsini falls in with a guy from Sudan when they can use the recreation yard. The two of them walk around talking. The other man has lived in the US for decades. THEY SPEAK IN ENGLISH. This is how Alsani begins to learn the language. What'd you guys talk about?
- [18:15]
Alsani
Talk about, like, getting released sometimes. He was like. Because he been there a long time. We talk about getting released when he got detained. He used to live in Pennsylvania. He got his wife and kids in Pennsylvania. The guy came to the state when he was like a kid. All his family is here, so he doesn't even know where they're going to send him.
- [18:38]
Jonathan Blitzer
It's easy to forget the fundamental horror of a place like the Moshannon Processing center, which is that many of the people who are held there have not committed any crime. People lose hope. They get desperate. At least two people died in Moshannon while Alsini was there.
- [18:54]
Alsani
There were two that I still remember. There was one of a Chinese guy who actually hung himself. He committed suicide. There was another guy who complained he was having chest pain. They called upon the guards, but no one came, and he was too late by the time he got to the hospital. So there were some rough things happening in there. But you have to have courage for you to continue to survive in that situation, right? And so that's what I gave myself so that I can continue to fight for my case.
- [19:34]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsani had been detained at machanin for four months. When he finally had his asylum hearing on September 29th.
- [19:40]
Alsani
The judge seemed like a nice judge, but I was concerned that I was gonna lose my case.
- [19:47]
Jonathan Blitzer
The asylum hearing was virt. The judge was in Maryland. Alsani was in Pennsylvania. Andrea was in New York.
- [19:53]
Andrea Nunes
It's funny because when you go into the final hearing as the attorney, you like, in your mind, have the things that you think might be the issue. I was worried about the judge being like, he's bad at dates. I don't believe him, because that's a big thing with asylum, is credibility. And, you know, Alsini, he was severely beaten in the head, which we had documented. But I was nervous that even when it's documented, that they would still be like, I think he's lying, or something like that. But that wasn't the issue. The judge totally believed him. She found that he was open in his responses and candid with the court.
- [20:26]
Jonathan Blitzer
The hearing lasted several hours, and in the end, the judge was persuaded Alsani had been persecuted at the hands of the Guinean government. She made her decision that day, finding that he was being targeted because of his political opinion. If he were returned to guinea, she wrote, Alsini would likely be jailed and possibly killed by the government. As a result, legally speaking, the US could not send him back there. And yet the judge denied Alsini's asylum claim. The reason was technical. During the Biden administration, the government created a controversial regulation that took asylum off the table for anyone who didn't enter the country at an official port of entry. Alsani crossed into the country from Mexico illegally in March of 2024. He was sick at the time. Likely with chikungunya, which comes with a high fever, rash, and extreme joint pain. Those, at least were some of the symptoms Alsini had. So Andrea makes the case that Alsini had a medical emergency, which was grounds for an exemption from the Biden era rule. But the judge disagrees. And by this point, Alsini's learned enough English that he can understand what the judge is saying.
- [21:38]
Nicole Phelps
Their own thing.
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Alsani
So, yeah, so at one point, I heard the judge say they were not sure what I deserved to be granted my asylum. So I was really getting angry and wanted to respond, but of course, they. They would not talk to you directly.
- [21:56]
Andrea Nunes
I could tell that he was understanding her decision, and he looked so defeated and so bummed. But then she was like, but my alternative finding is that, you know, he is eligible for withholding of removal relief.
- [22:06]
Jonathan Blitzer
Instead of asylum, the judge grants Alsani something called withholding of removal. I'm going to parse the legalese here because this is another major shift in how immigration law is getting reinterpreted. People who win asylum can eventually apply for permanent residency or a green card. People with withholding can't, but they also can't be deported to their home country. So this is historically counted as a win.
- [22:31]
Alsani
So my lawyer explained to me, we will then continue to work on my case, but also this was going to allow me to come out, out of detention.
- [22:44]
Andrea Nunes
I remember calling a friend who does a lot of detained representation, and he was like, that's awesome. Withholding is really hard to win. Like, you should definitely feel proud of yourself, but your client's not getting out.
- [23:03]
Jonathan Blitzer
That's Andrea Noon, an immigration lawyer in New York. Our story continues in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stay with us.
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WNYC Studios Announcer
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When I think about my relationship to money, the phrase that comes to mind is superstitious dread. As a freelancer, my income is, shall we say, variable, and that can be scary. My financial education as a child was mostly limited to my parents yelling about it. So as with most scary, unpleasant concepts, my lifelong tactic has been avoidance. I'm aware that this is no way for a grown up to act, and that's why Monarch has been a game changer. Monarch helps me face my fears by putting all my income and spending information into one place and making that information easy to digest. Even for me, the diagrams make it crystal clear where my money is going. It really demystifies the scary things like setting financial goals and budgets. I can ask its AI assistant questions like, can I afford this vacation? Or this fancy jar of face cream. It's like having a financial advisor in my pocket, and that's helped me reach my most important financial goal of banishing the fear and getting my money on track. Write your own money story with Monarch use code newyorkeronarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core Half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code New Yorker. I'm Emily Flake, cartoonist at the New Yorker. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Bombas. Summer's here and we are living for all things outdoors. Whether your thing is jogging, heading to the beach or grilling in front of your stoop, Bombas makes your comfiest summer staples so you can make the most out of all your summer plans. They've got a whole line of pro level sports specific socks for golf, yoga, the gym and socks for every kind of runner. I personally do not run if I can help it, but I walk everywhere and if I don't get my 10,000 steps in, my phone will yell at me. These socks are so soft and cushioned right where I need it, whether I'm doing a power saunter in the park or just running a million errands. Plus, they're airy sweat wicking. My feet feel as good after a long day of pounding the pavement as they did when I left the apartment. Head over to bombas.com radiohour and use code radiohour for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com radiohour code radiohour at checkout the New
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Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Mint Mobile. There are things in life that you don't want to be transparent, like your swimsuit or your search history. But when it comes to your wireless bill, transparency is everything. That's why Mint Mobile's wireless plans have no gimmicks and no gotchas, just high speed data and reliable coverage on the T Mobile 5G network. And right now, all plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. Choose from 3, 6 or 12 month plans and say goodbye to a monthly bill. You can even bring your current phone and your number to get your new wireless plan. For just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com nyradiohour that's mintmobile.com nyradIOhour Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com nyradIohour that's it. There's no catch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months $90 for six months or $180 for 12 months. Plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term Only greater than 50gb may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20gb hotspot capable device required. Availability, speed and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com
- [26:45]
Jonathan Blitzer
A new state Department report blames Cuba for fomenting an anti American left. Meanwhile, the GOP is pushing the C word hard. The barbarians are in the gate.
- [26:57]
Quince Brand Spokesperson
Look, 35 years ago, Republicans and Democrats
- [27:00]
Jonathan Blitzer
in Congress were fighting communism on a distant shore.
- [27:02]
WNYC Studios Announcer
Now it's here.
- [27:03]
Jonathan Blitzer
Why communism and why now on this week's on the Media from wnyc. Find on the media wherever you get your podcasts. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Jonathan Blitzer. I'm a staff writer at the New Yorker, and I'm sitting in today for David Remnick. On today's episode, we're taking a close look at the ways that the Trump administration has been overhauling the nation's immigration system. We'll continue with the story of a man from guinea who was detained after an immigration hearing. That's an unprecedented step that ICE began taking in 2025. The man's name is Alsani. We're only using his first name for his safety. At his asylum hearing, a judge denied Alsini's asylum status, but she granted what's called withholding of removal. That meant that Alsani couldn't be deported back to Guinea. Before Trump's second term, most people who had won withholding of removal would be released from government custody. But that's not what happened to Alayni. He spent the rest of the fall in Moshanon. By December, he'd been locked up for six months, even though the government wasn't appealing the judge's ruling in his case. And meanwhile, the Trump administration was in the midst of a highly public battle about withholding of removal. Kilmar Abrego Garcia Kilmar Abrego Garcia Remember Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador? That's the Maryland man who in the beginning of the Trump administration was picked up and deported to El Salvador. Mysterious mistakenly put in a prison there
- [28:35]
Andrea Nunes
and then had to come back to
- [28:36]
Jonathan Blitzer
the US there's an ongoing fight to deport him to Liberia. Abrego's attorney say he should be sent to Costa Rica instead. In the first year of Trump's second term, the government deported some 15,000 people to third countries. One group wound up in South Sudan, another in Eswatini. Afghans and Iranians were sent to Panama, a Colombian woman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It wasn't just that these people were deported to an unfamiliar country. That country was often just a short stop on the road back to the place they'd fled. This has now happened to two of Andrea's Guinean clients. Both had one withholding of removal in immigration court, and both were deported to Ghana. But the government of Ghana doesn't care about the ruling of a U.S. immigration judge. And so Ghana has since sent both men back to Guinea. Both of them are currently in hiding. So even with the withholding of removal decision in his case, Alsani, like Abrego Garcia, was in a new kind of jeopardy.
- [29:35]
Alsani
If they sending me to a third country, they're just putting me into a worse and worse situation.
- [29:41]
Jonathan Blitzer
There was a bond hearing to determine if Alsani could be released now that he had won withholding of removal. But it was full of mishaps. The translator kept getting the facts wrong, garbling Alsini's answers. Instead of a rash from his illness, the interpreter said Alsini had pimples on his skin. Sometimes the interpreter used French words which Alsani couldn't understand. They lost the bond hearing. Andrea filed a motion to challenge the decision. In the meantime, though, Alsani and Andrea knew that he could be sent out of the country at any moment. They came up with plans for what to do if that seemed to be happening.
- [30:14]
Andrea Nunes
We would practice. I would pretend to be ice, and he would be Al Sani, and I would be like, oh, Alsani, we're going to send you to Ghana.
- [30:21]
Jonathan Blitzer
And.
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Andrea Nunes
And then Al Sani would, like, do his practice. And he'd be like, I cannot be removed to Ghana because I have an appeal pending with the bia and I have an automatic stay. But, like, we would do, you had
- [30:33]
Jonathan Blitzer
to come up with a script.
- [30:34]
Andrea Nunes
Essentially, we would practice it all the time, just because, you know, thankfully, again, Alsani did speak. He speaks really. I'm really impressed by his English. Again, it's not good enough for court, but, you know, for.
- [30:45]
Jonathan Blitzer
Well, he essentially learned it in immigration detention.
- [30:47]
Andrea Nunes
Yeah, it's wild. But he can advocate for himself.
- [30:49]
Jonathan Blitzer
The new American dream. It's like such an incredible dystopian version of cultural assimilation.
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Andrea Nunes
But I thought to myself, okay, like, maybe if they accidentally try to send him somewhere, he can advocate for himself and they'll understand.
- [31:02]
Jonathan Blitzer
ICE tends to move people with little to no warning. Often, the only way that someone finds out that they are about to be moved is that their commissary account is Frozen. They can't buy food or make calls. One day late in December, Alsani's account stops working. He tries to make a phone call, but can't. He and Andrea have a plan for this too? They've put money on her friend's account. He calls Andrea and puts Alsani on the line.
- [31:27]
Andrea Nunes
You know, my commentary's been shut off. He was really worried. He was like, I'm scared. And that's. Those are, like, the. I feel like the worst words to hear from someone, especially in his situation.
- [31:39]
Jonathan Blitzer
Within hours, Alsani's on a bus heading who knows where.
- [31:44]
Alsani
Once we got off the bus, and then they took us into an airplane, then I said to myself, oh, wow, so they finally actually gonna be deporting me. So I was really, really worried at that point.
- [31:57]
Jonathan Blitzer
When the plane finally lands, the ICE
- [31:59]
Alsani
agents say, some of you are staying here, but then others are gonna be continuing.
- [32:05]
Jonathan Blitzer
They read through a list of names. A few people get off. Alsini does not. The plane takes off again. Another landing, another list of names. Alsini stays shackled on the plane. They land for a third time.
- [32:17]
Alsani
And finally they called my name and said. They pointed to a separate vehicle. They said that's where I was gonna go.
- [32:24]
Jonathan Blitzer
In a short drive later, the van pulls into a prison complex. Alsini and the others are still in the United States. They're in Indiana at the Miami Correctional Center.
- [32:34]
Alsani
Yeah, When I first get there, one other guy was getting released, and we asked him how the place look like, and he says, the place, no good.
- [32:47]
Jonathan Blitzer
Immigration detention centers like Moshannan are not supposed to be like prisons. Most of the detainees are not criminals. But the Miami Correctional Facility is a prison. ICE rents space there. Alsani was put in a small cell with one cellmate. He couldn't go outside for recreation.
- [33:04]
Alsani
We'll be locked up for 20 hours a day. The only time you will come out is to either eat or go take a shower.
- [33:11]
Jonathan Blitzer
So you spent 20 hours of every day in essentially a cell?
- [33:16]
Alsani
Yes. There were two of us in a cell. The bathroom was also within that cell. Everything was there.
- [33:26]
Jonathan Blitzer
What was the food like?
- [33:31]
Alsani
The food was in. There was no food, really. It was only sandwich that they gave you, like peanuts butter sandwich or bologna sandwich. That's what you will get.
- [33:44]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsini doesn't eat pork, so he'd have to trade the bologna sandwiches for something he could eat.
- [33:49]
Alsani
For me to get a peanuts butter sandwich, I needed two bologna sandwiches to get one peanuts butter sandwich.
- [33:56]
Jonathan Blitzer
That was the rate. That was the going rate. Many of the people working in the ICE detention center were inmates from the prison cleaning, doing other menial jobs. Alsani said the prisoners had more opportunities to be out of their cells than the immigrants did. Which reminded me of something another person being detained by ICE told me recently. We're less than prisoners.
- [34:17]
Andrea Nunes
Their staff, I think, was really violent. Alsini got pepper sprayed by staff there at least one time.
- [34:25]
Jonathan Blitzer
Weeks go by. Alsini says officers would come by to ask who was willing to be deported. They would also look for people who were willing to be sent to third countries.
- [34:34]
Alsani
ICE will come every day and tell you so and so country is willing to take you, and so you just sign and get deported to that country.
- [34:45]
Jonathan Blitzer
Did you know anyone who got sent to a third country, to a country that wasn't their home country?
- [34:52]
Alsani
Yeah, I knew this Senegalese guy who got sent back to Ghana, but I knew a lot of people who got sent to a third country, countries that they were not from. So I better be detained than get out and do something good for my life than being sent back and getting killed. Because if you're taking me home, they will kill me. So if you're sending me home, I'll tell you to kill me right now.
- [35:19]
Jonathan Blitzer
Alsini and I talked about this a lot. He really means it when he says that he'd rather die in the US Than go back to Guinea. He and Andrea are increasingly desperate to get him out of detention. She files a petition known as a writ of habeas corpus. Habeas is one of the bedrock legal rights in a democracy. You cannot be held indefinitely without any actual charges. Andrea wants a judge to evaluate whether ICE could go on holding Alsani at the Miami Correctional Facility. Things are getting worse by the day. These are men from all over the world, locked up in abysmal conditions with no idea when they might be released.
- [35:56]
Alsani
You have to understand the state of mind of people in that kind of situation, because people are hopeless and so they feel like they have nothing to lose, and so they are always frustrated and can take that frustration up on to you.
- [36:13]
Jonathan Blitzer
Fights sometimes broke out. Guards reacted harshly. They pepper sprayed men and threw them into solitary confinement, regardless of whether they were instigators or victims. One morning, Alan is on the breakfast line when he notices another detainee having some sort of emotional breakdown.
- [36:28]
Alsani
He was screaming and crying and saying, if they don't take him out of there, he's going to hurt someone. The God said, if you want to kill yourself, kill yourself. You want to kill someone, kill someone. I don't care.
- [36:41]
Jonathan Blitzer
Remember, Alsini is short and Thin. In moments like this, he's an easy target. Before Alsini realizes what's even happening, the man is attacking him.
- [36:50]
Alsani
This guy comes from behind me. While we were waiting for food, he comes from behind me and ripped my dread and then almost took out my eye.
- [37:00]
Jonathan Blitzer
When the guards finally get the man off him, Alsani's lost a chunk of hair. His scalp is bleeding. But worse, he's really worried about his eye.
- [37:08]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
He.
- [37:08]
Jonathan Blitzer
He can't open it. It's bleeding badly. When he asks for medical attention, they
- [37:13]
Alsani
said they don't care about it. They told me to get out of their face and leave. If I didn't leave, they were going to pepper spray me or stuff like that.
- [37:22]
Jonathan Blitzer
Back in the cell, later in the morning, when someone comes around to count the detainees, Alseini asks again for medical assistance. The woman doing the count says she'll ask, but she doesn't come back. A few hours later, someone else does, though, with major news, news about a legal development. A judge has finally decided on Alsani's habeas petition. And after nine months of being held in detention, the judge orders that he has to be released immediately. It's February 12, 2026.
- [37:51]
Alsani
I was sleeping, and then the lady came and called my name. She said, you're going home. I said, going home where? She said, you're going back to New York. You should start packing your stuff. We can't keep you here even for 20 minutes.
- [38:05]
Jonathan Blitzer
Andrea is overjoyed. She arranges for a volunteer to pick him up from the detention center, buy him a bus ticket, and by the next day, he's back in New York. And that's where he is now. Kind of back where he started, learning his way around the city, looking for work, trying to make a life for himself. Alsani isn't the kind of person to talk much about his trauma, but clearly everything he's been through, first in guinea, now in the US had added a layer of difficulty and chaos to his life. It's surely having an impact on how he thinks about his future. At the time of his release, there were nearly 70,000 people being held in immigration detention, more people than ever. And that number doesn't begin to capture the millions of lives that have been turned upside down by the president's mass deportation campaign. In the meantime, the legal landscape was shifting. The administration's courthouse arrests began to face legal setbacks in court.
- [39:00]
Heather Axford
A federal judge in California is banning
- [39:03]
Jonathan Blitzer
federal officials from making arrests at immigration courts nationwide. In a setback for the Trump administration's crackdown in New York, a judge ordered the government to stop detaining people at 26 Federal Plaza, where all of this started for Alsani.
- [39:17]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
In the ruling, the court wrote that while, quote, there is a strong governmental interest in enforcing immigration laws, there is also a serious interest in allowing migrants to pursue asylum claims without fear of arrest.
- [39:30]
Jonathan Blitzer
But the morning after the judge's ruling, masked ICE agents were back outside the courthouse ready to make more arrests. An activist named Peter Melt Cattell was there at the time. He tried to show them copies of the decision. The image, it reminds me of Alsani leaving the courthouse a year ago, holding a printout from the judge listing the date and time of his next appointment. You'd think the documentation might actually mean something, as Cattell described it later to a local paper, he showed them the decision and the agents waved him away and said simply, we don't care. I'm Jonathan Blitzer. Our program continues on the next episode when I'll speak with a Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the politics of immigration and how this is all playing out with voters. Thanks for listening.
- [40:28]
WNYC Studios Announcer
The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul and Ursula Sommer.
- [40:50]
Jonathan Blitzer
We had special assistance on this episode from Sarah Nix.
- [40:54]
WNYC Studios Announcer
The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.
- [41:05]
Nicole Phelps
Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co host of the Run through podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott and Simone Bellotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of Editorial Content at Vogue US and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of Editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch Watch the Run through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.