Consider This from NPR - Florida: The front line of Trump's immigration crackdown

Episode Date: July 19, 2025

NPR correspondent Jasmine Garsd has taken several reporting trips to Florida recently, a state seeing some of the most aggressive immigration enforcement since President Trump took office again in January. She's spoken with children separated from their parents and reported on a new massive detention center in the state. For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series Garsd talks about how Florida is key to understanding what the future of immigration enforcement may look like. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Since 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. What 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 were experiencing that overcrowding after record numbers of arrests by ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Garz 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 household. Because mom or dad or both is gone.

When we spoke, she was about to return to Florida for another reporting trip. It is a state Garz 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. 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 first-hand look at the Trump administration's most aggressive immigration enforcement tactics. From NPR, I'm Scott Tetra. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things and other currencies. With WISE, you can send, spend, or receive money across borders, all at a fair exchange rate. No markups or hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. There is so much happening in politics in any given week, you might need help putting it all in perspective. T's and C's apply. for you all in under 30 minutes. Listen to the weekly roundup every Friday on the NPR politics podcast. It'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. Danielle Pletka 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. 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 US 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 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. This 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. 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% of those 60,000 or so migrants have not been convicted of any crime. 72%. 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. And so, like you month, there's been an increase in people without criminal convictions who are being detained. 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's 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, uh, office, how people like that are feeling about this. 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 Mauricio Ambrosio, I spoke to his neighbors. Most of his neighbors in his area voted for President Trump. And I spoke to one neighbor.

His name is Greg Johns. And he told me, 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. There's a new Gallup poll that indicates that a record high, 79% of US adults say immigration is a good thing for the country. And 62% 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. 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 widespread viral infections, lack of food.

I've had many inmates call me and say, we didn't eat today. And people- Not at all. No, because either the food went bad or 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 wanna take a step back because you've been talking about this, kind of throughout 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? 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 who 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 and 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 Wakim. It was edited by Adam Rainey and Eric Westerwein. Our executive producer is Sam Yanigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Tetra. Federal funding for public media has been eliminated.

That means decades of bipartisan support for public radio and television is ending. To be clear NPR isn't going anywhere. We do need your support. Please give today to help keep rigorous independent and irreplaceable news coverage available to everybody free of charge. You can make your gift at donate.npr.org and thank you.