As the immigration detention system flourished since the 1980s, it led to the creation of the private prison industry. The last episode of WLRN's podcast Detention By Design looks at the inextricable links between the two, and how, in turn, the picture has gone full circle in 2022, leaving us in a place very similar to the early days of Haitian and Cuban arrivals in Florida.

‘It’s all about the money’: Immigration detention in 2022

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.

Detention by Design is funded by The Shepard Broad Foundation.

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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. Detention by Design is funded by The Shepard Broad Foundation.

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‘It’s all about the money’: Immigration detention in 2022

‘It’s all about the money’: Immigration detention in 2022

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