Sherburne County Jail (Part I)

Inside a small county jail in central Minnesota, 300 immigrants are caged up to 20 hours a day, never allowed outside, some detained by ICE up to a year.

Some endure special treatment: solitary confinement, abuse, medical negligence, sexual assault.

What if detained immigrants are being subjected to a kind of torture before they're deported? What if entire families are destroyed by county jails profiting from a federal system criminalizing immigration? What if the lives of immigrants are being forfeited as the coronavirus spreads through those jails?

Well get ready, you're going inside to hear about it from the detained immigrants themselves, as well as the activists on the outside trying to free them, the resistance against the authority, all towards an emotional crescendo of love and loss, of family and freedom, and the soul of a nation, all from a place called Sherburne County Jail.

This is American Refugee.

Written, Engineered & Produced: Sam Graber

Music: Rare Medium, Purple Funk Metropolis

Recorded: Minneapolis, MN

Original Release: May 2020