Immigration detention, the shame of America, is the subject of Detained the brave and shocking docudrama which is in a world-premiere run at the Fountain Theater.
The playwrights, France-Luce Benson and Judy Rabinovitz, interviewed dozens of people who have been treated unfairly and even brutally by our immigrant laws and policies for the past fifty years. Some of these people had entered the USA illegally; most were long-time citizens. But in all cases they had become good Americans, working hard, obeying laws, raising families, contributing to society. Yet the country they had loved and enriched turned against them, finding an excuse to arrest them, detain them (sometimes for years at a time), before finally putting them on trial in a mockery of justice.
Eight skillful actors speak the words collected by Benson and Rabinovitz. Seven of the actors play multiple roles; the eighth actor, Christine Avila, plays an immigration lawyer who gives context and background to the human-rights battle taking place before our eyes. As she explains, up until the 1990s America’s immigration policy was both humane and honorable. If someone ran afoul of the law they could go before a judge, make a plea for justice and be treated fairly, with a positive verdict likely. But when things changed in the 1990s justice went by the boards. Immigration courts became kangaroo courts.
Here’s a typical story that’s acted out in Detained. A Trinidadian-American got in some kind of minor trouble with the law. ICE agents arrested him, despite the fact that he had served in the Gulf War and won eight achievement medals there. He spent three years in detention, this man who loved America and had fought for it. When he was finally put on trial, he brought his army uniform into court, medals and all. The judge was unmoved and ordered him deported back to Trinidad. It put him into a rage, of course. The irony was that because he was a vet he was entitled to be buried in the USA. Thus the country that expelled him would ultimately have to take him back.
There are many other heartbreaking stories like that in Detained: stories of families being broken up (parents deported, children who were citizens being left behind); detainees giving up hope after years of detention and committing suicide; children suffering the trauma and shame of seeing their parents arrested by ICE and treated like animals, with their hands and ankles cuffed. It goes on like that for ninety grim, outrageous minutes.
As for ICE, many of its agents would be happy in a Nazi uniform. As the lawyer in the play relates, there was an explosion of joy in the ICE ranks when Trump became president and lifted all legal restraints on them, giving them carte blanche to abuse their prisoners as they saw fit. (“We’re free, we’re free!” they shouted at each other.)
Detained has been masterfully directed. Working on a simple set (mostly large blocks), the actors have been well-choreographed. Moving sometimes in unison, other times taking center stage for solo speeches, they make a striking sight in their orange prison jump suits. At certain times one of the actors wields a hand-held video camera whose images flash here and there.
The use of language is equally colorful. Most of the dialogue is in English, but Spanish is heard as well (which is only fitting, as 40% of immigrant detainees are Latino).
Detained is not without hope. The people whose stories are memorialized here remind all of us that we have the power to dismantle a corrupt, inhuman system.
