PBS Report on Immigrant Detainees

Thank you for this- it's playing in San Francisco on Channel 9 at 2pm this Sunday the 17th. (but was a little hard to find on the KQED website)


Maunica Sthanki <maunica@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday 9/15/06 PBS America's Investigative Reports is airing a piece on NPR investigative journalist Daniel Zwerdling's breaking of the story of abuse of immigration detainees in Passaic County Jail and the death of immigration detainee Richard Rust  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5022866 triggering a congressional investigation into the health care needs of immigration detainees.  The piece reportedly will feature an interview with Patrick Brown, a Jamaican deportee previously represented by CLINIC in Oakdale, who helped Mr. Zwerdling break the story.   The episode is entitled "An Inside Job"- visit

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/air/episodes_103.html  (text below) and watch some footage.

As you may know, each local PBS station has control over its own broadcast schedule, so unfortunately I don't have a master schedule indicating when the program will air on every station nationwide. Below are broadcast times/dates for a few cities.  If there are other cities you are interested in, you can check pbs.org.  Thanks!

WNET/NEW YORK - Friday 9/15 10PM
WETA/WASH DC - Friday 9/15 9:30PM
WGBH/BOSTON - Friday 9/15 9PM

Episode 103
An Inside Job

In the spring of 2004, the abuse of prisoners was front page news across the country. Attack dogs used on prisoners, assaults committed by guards, even deaths in custody. But while most of the media was focusing on those kinds of abuses in a faraway prison complex named Abu Ghraib, a veteran investigative journalist was finding the exact same thing in decidedly less exotic locales.

Places like New Jersey and Louisiana.

AIR traces a journey that began in the spring of 2004, when National Public Radio investigative reporter Daniel Zwerdling received a tip from an immigration lawyer. This began an award-winning reporting odyssey that would lead to the end of the practice of using attack dogs on prisoners at one prison, and highlight the scandal of a Jamaican man who died while being held in another.

In his 18-month investigation, Zwerdling faced obstacle after obstacle. The Department of Homeland Security didn't want him investigating; the prisons didn't want him visiting. But Zwerdling persevered, and five months after his initial inquiry, he visited the detention center at Passaic County Jail in northern New Jersey. There he met a prisoner who described being beaten by prison guards and terrorized by dogs. NPR broadcast Zwerdling's report on immigrant detainees on November 17-18, 2004. The next day, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had sent a memo to all facilities holding immigrant detainees: Stop using dogs.

By then Zwerdling knew he had only scratched the story's surface. He started collecting testimony from jails around the country, and tracking down eyewitnesses. Cultivating the trust of immigrant detainees proved the key to exposing the circumstances of the horrifying death of Richard Rust, a 34-year-old Jamaican. Rust died of a heart attack in the recreation area of a Louisiana prison -- a tragedy that might have been avoided if the Federal Bureau of Prisons' own detailed medical standards had been followed. Zwerdling was able to report on the lengthy delay in getting medical treatment for Rust, in violation of Federal rules. But he never could have done so if he hadn't cultivated key sources inside the prison walls, men who courageously -- with everything to lose -- gave eyewitness testimony that allowed Zwerdling to uncover the truth behind Rust's death.

In "An Inside Job," AIR reports from Washington D.C., Louisiana and Jamaica on a story that changed federal government policy and gave detainees a voice to demand their own better treatment.

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