One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention

In 2025, as ICE was struggling to meet an impossible goal of three thousand immigration arrests per day, the agency took an unprecedented step: picking people up when they arrived at immigration court. These were immigrants seeking legal status through appropriate channels. The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer, who has been reporting on immigration for over a decade, tells the story of one man detained this way, a Guinean refugee who was seeking asylum after a severe beating and death threats by his government. His first name is Alsainy, and his story exemplifies the ways that the Trump Administration is sabotaging the system of legal immigration.  Though President Donald Trump came back to the White House with broad support for his border policies, his Administration’s immigration crackdown has been broadly unpopular. The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer spoke with two representatives in Congress about the blowback: Jason Crow, of Colorado, and María Salazar, of Florida. Crow is one of the Democratic Party’s recruitment co-chairs for the midterm elections, a role that entails helping candidates figure out what to say about issues that have proved controversial for their party. Salazar, whose district includes much of Miami, is a diehard Trump supporter, but many of her Republican constituents are outraged at how ICE has been operating, and she remains hopeful that the Administration might make a sharp turn. “Mr. President, you’ve got to change the way when it comes to immigration,” she’d like to tell him. “Otherwise, we’re not going to have a Republican Party.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices