The first episode of the Detention By Design podcast looks at how Haitian president Francois 'Papa Doc' Duvalier went from popular Black nationalist to dictator, starting a reign of terror that forced the first wave of refugees to set off in rickety boats to Florida's shores 50 years ago. A new phrase was coined - 'I'd rather get a shark visa' - and a new era in American and Haitian history began.

'You left for persecution… the solution is not to put you in jail'

As recently as 1955 there were virtually no immigrants held in detention in the U.S. Today, the federal government holds tens of thousands each day, in 130 facilities across the country. But the story of how we got here did not start at the U.S.-Mexico border - it started on Florida’s shores, 50 years ago.  

Through personal histories and meticulously compiled archival materials, Detention By Design will tell how the arrival of Haitian and Cuban migrants by boat in the 1970s and 1980s - and the crude experiments in small Florida jails that followed - shaped the immigration and detention system that we have in this country today.

Detention by Design is funded by The Shepard Broad Foundation.