Detention is a documentary about confinement within confinement. It is about “a complete hell”, as described by Andrea Manrique, a 34-year-old Colombian, detained in the Irwin County Detention Center, in the state of Georgia, in the United States. Manrique was one of hundreds of undocumented migrants detained there during the first months of the pandemic, when the world debated releasing those who had not committed serious crimes, like them, who were forgotten in a labyrinthine immigration system. The center also became known as one of the most ruthless places in the country when a nurse denounced that women had been sterilized there without their consent. DetentionIn other words, it is a documentary about cruelty.
“I spent hundreds of hours talking to them from my home in New York,” says documentary director and ProPublica journalist Seth Freed Wessler, who found a window to interview detained migrants: a video calling system allowed in jail by the that Wesser had to pay 25 cents per minute. “These video calls were like a portal where I could talk to them and see how they moved without being seen,” says Wessler, who asked his sources not only for interviews but also to let the camera roll in moments of prayer, when the detainees receive orders from the guards, or when they walk from one side to another like ghosts without finding a way out. Reported with the support of Type Investigations, and produced with the support of Field of Vision, El PAÍS shares this documentary with its readers.