In Dover, some 15 minutes away, the fear was tangible. "I'm scared," said one woman who asked NPR not to name her for fear of retribution. During a Sept. 4 raid, she followed and recorded a car carrying ICE detainees speeding to the warehouse. Two agents circled her, she says, filming her. "But I'm more scared for my community."
Activists called it a smoking gun, but in order to report this story, I was looking to speak to someone who had been held in that warehouse. But there was a terror blanketing Dover, and, for the first time in my career, no one in the immigrant community would speak to me on the record. When photographer Jose Alvarado and I arrived at noon, the streets were mostly empty. As we spoke to a supermarket cashier, a man walked in, made eye contact with me and turned to leave. I told him that we were journalists, not ICE agents, and he returned to his shopping. It was a quick, quiet moment that told me a lot about the mood in town.
I left business cards at every store and asked Dover Council Member Sandra Wittner to connect me with any constituents who'd seen or heard anything.
A week later, WhatsApp messages started coming in. A woman believed her father, taken in the raid, had been at Roxbury. Her friend, taken the same day, had been deported to Honduras. I found him on TikTok. He told me that he and nine other men were held in the Roxbury warehouse parking lot. He asked me not to use his name because he was concerned about his loved ones who were still in the U.S.
I’m burying a major part of this story here: I also interviewed a contractor whose company the Department of Homeland Security approached about converting warehouses into detention centers. He asked to remain anonymous for fear of government retaliation. He says his company suggested a more humane approach, but after speaking with a DHS deputy director, he understood that wasn't what White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller wanted. The contractor says he was told that Miller “did not want the facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane.” He also says that in many years of working with the federal government, he had “never been in that position before."
My last stop was a Mexican diner. A waitress who did not want to be named because of the climate of fear in the town said one of the men picked up was a regular. She nodded to an empty seat. But then again, the whole place was empty.
Like everyone I met in town, she wanted to know: Where were those men taken?
To read my investigation in full, check out the story here. |
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