The Business of Migrant Detention

This message comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Are you that friend? The one who's constantly recommending podcast episodes to anyone who will listen? Subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter and nerd out with us. You'll get fresh podcast recommendations every week handpicked by the people that live for this stuff. Subscribe at npr.org/podclub. You can also find the link in the description for this episode. Now on to the show. In nineteen o three, a reporter named Polteny Bigelow stumbled across a story in Upstate New York. The part of New York that is right along, the Canadian border. A rural town in Franklin County called Malone, where he starts talking with locals. And they tell him this route from Canada into Northern New York has become this sort of vastly underreported secret passage of illegal entry into The United States for Chinese migrants. Like, why is that a pathway? Is it easier to get into Canada at that time? Yeah. It's a super intentional choice. So this is about twenty years after The US passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, which bars Chinese laborers basically entirely, from legal immigration to The United States. So for many Chinese migrants who are still looking for a path in, this is one of their best options. Wow. Interesting. They take a boat to Vancouver. They take a train across the entire length of Canada. They stop over in Montreal where there are Chinese communities that coach them, that help them cross the border. And then they cross this just incredibly rural, isolated sort of path into Northern New York. That takes us back to the reporter, Poultney Bigelow, who starts asking around. And people in Malone tell him, go look at the county jail. He arrives at the county jail, and the county jail is filled, is packed to the brim with Chinese migrants. The sheriff took me into the jail where were about 30 Chinaman awaiting trial. They basically stashed people in the attic of this jail, which was never intended to hold people at all. In the yard was a massive refuse that never would have been allowed to accumulate in a decent family. He is sort of stunned by what he sees. There were no outdoor recreation grounds, no place for a daily walk. Two of the big window panes were broken and had been repaired by stuffing in old rags or newspapers. It's a sort of quite brutal form of warehousing from its earliest incarnations. And Bigelow writes in his dispatch, right? He says, these people are not being held because they're accused of committing a crime. These are not the people we expect to find in a local jail. Right? He says they are being held administratively by the immigration service because …