A new documentary that gives Netflix NFLX viewers an in-depth look at the machinations of immigration enforcement was allegedly – according to filmmakers Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz – pressured by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to remove a number of scenes. The filmmakers told the New York Times in a report that they were threatened by ICE (a department within Homeland Security) to delete footage and even delay the release of the project until after the 2020 presidential election.
Immigration Nation covers the Trump administration’s notorious “zero-tolerance” immigration policy through both the eyes of immigrants entering the system and of the internal department itself, so viewers can witness the experience from both sides.
Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials granted the filmmaking duo unprecedented, and never before granted, access into the organization in 2017 where they would start filming and gathering raw material. Over the course of three years, the pair had gathered a lot.
Some of the film that is said to have drawn ire from the agency were the moving images of a number of parents who were separated from their children at the border, including an incident where a hysterical 3-year-old child was pulled away from his father’s leg by officers.
A scene of an officer illegally picking a lock into an apartment building to get to a person of interest, another scene where agents entered a home looking for one immigrant and ended up arresting three people, including two of the individual’s roommates who were asleep on bunk beds, and a New York official who said to an agent through a radio, “start taking collaterals, man,” in regards to the agent making street arrests. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,”.
The filmmakers stated that ICE threatened to subpoena raw footage and “threatened legal action” if scenes that negatively portrayed their policies and actions were not removed.
The pair went as far as to start using encrypted messenger services, installing cameras in their office and moving the raw footage to a secure location to thwart what they believed was very aggressive rhetoric by ICE through the negotiations around the finished film.
“Experiencing them is painful and scary and intimidating and at the same time angering and makes you want to fight to do the story,” Mr Schwarz said.
Press secretary for ICE, Jenny L. Burke, stated the agency only pushed back in concordance with the agreement that Mr Schwarz had signed relating to the film and noted that through the many years of the department working with media entities that they had never been accused of bullying.
The men and women of ICE perform outstanding work daily that often goes unnoticed or is misrepresented to the point of falsehood,” Ms Burke said in a public statement. “ICE is firmly committed to carrying out the agency’s sworn duty to enforce federal law as passed by Congress professionally, consistently and in full compliance with federal law and agency policies.”
The conflicts over the material were later resolved between the filmmakers’ legal representative, Victoria Cook, and government lawyers. ICE leaders were purportedly not pleased with the direction the film took in uncovering the stories of so many migrants when the focus was supposed to be on ICE officers and that some scenes would reveal sensitive enforcement tactics to the general public, a fact the filmmakers disputed.
Though the pair left the production process with some compassion for ICE officers’ predicament, they said the problem by-and-large was systemic and harmful to both immigrants and their families but that everyone in government agencies, specifically ICE, are not inherently evil.
The component is characterized in the series by Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
“The brilliance of the system is that their job has been siphoned off in such a way that maybe what they see day to day seems justified, but when you add it up, all of the people just doing their job, it becomes this crazy terrorizing system.”
Immigration Nation premieres Monday, August 3 on Netflix.
Immigration Nation covers the Trump administration’s notorious “zero-tolerance” immigration policy through both the eyes of immigrants entering the system and of the internal department itself, so viewers can witness the experience from both sides.
Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials granted the filmmaking duo unprecedented, and never before granted, access into the organization in 2017 where they would start filming and gathering raw material. Over the course of three years, the pair had gathered a lot.
Some of the film that is said to have drawn ire from the agency were the moving images of a number of parents who were separated from their children at the border, including an incident where a hysterical 3-year-old child was pulled away from his father’s leg by officers.
A scene of an officer illegally picking a lock into an apartment building to get to a person of interest, another scene where agents entered a home looking for one immigrant and ended up arresting three people, including two of the individual’s roommates who were asleep on bunk beds, and a New York official who said to an agent through a radio, “start taking collaterals, man,” in regards to the agent making street arrests. “I don’t care what you do, but bring at least two people,”.
The filmmakers stated that ICE threatened to subpoena raw footage and “threatened legal action” if scenes that negatively portrayed their policies and actions were not removed.
The pair went as far as to start using encrypted messenger services, installing cameras in their office and moving the raw footage to a secure location to thwart what they believed was very aggressive rhetoric by ICE through the negotiations around the finished film.
“Experiencing them is painful and scary and intimidating and at the same time angering and makes you want to fight to do the story,” Mr Schwarz said.
Press secretary for ICE, Jenny L. Burke, stated the agency only pushed back in concordance with the agreement that Mr Schwarz had signed relating to the film and noted that through the many years of the department working with media entities that they had never been accused of bullying.
The men and women of ICE perform outstanding work daily that often goes unnoticed or is misrepresented to the point of falsehood,” Ms Burke said in a public statement. “ICE is firmly committed to carrying out the agency’s sworn duty to enforce federal law as passed by Congress professionally, consistently and in full compliance with federal law and agency policies.”
The conflicts over the material were later resolved between the filmmakers’ legal representative, Victoria Cook, and government lawyers. ICE leaders were purportedly not pleased with the direction the film took in uncovering the stories of so many migrants when the focus was supposed to be on ICE officers and that some scenes would reveal sensitive enforcement tactics to the general public, a fact the filmmakers disputed.
Though the pair left the production process with some compassion for ICE officers’ predicament, they said the problem by-and-large was systemic and harmful to both immigrants and their families but that everyone in government agencies, specifically ICE, are not inherently evil.
The component is characterized in the series by Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.
“The brilliance of the system is that their job has been siphoned off in such a way that maybe what they see day to day seems justified, but when you add it up, all of the people just doing their job, it becomes this crazy terrorizing system.”
Immigration Nation premieres Monday, August 3 on Netflix.
Tl;dr; ICE didn’t like certain scenes of a documentary about their work, so they tried to have the filmmakers delete scenes and prevent its release until after the election.
