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0:22

Previously, on White Lies, we

0:24

have effectively lost control of our borders

0:27

there's an issue

0:28

here, which is can't win, even if we win.

0:30

It was very difficult to know

0:32

who was who without holding

0:35

people for a while.

0:36

These people were not in

0:38

the United States. It just goes

0:40

against a grain of all

0:43

sense a fair way that we've gotten this country.

0:45

Those people are illegally in this country. They

0:47

have no right to be here, and we have a right

0:49

to hold them for as long as we have to

0:52

to protect the safety of the American people.

0:57

You can make it right at the next street and we'll go

0:59

down the back of the prison. Early

1:02

last summer, we were driving around the perimeter

1:04

of the Atlanta penitentiary with Patrick

1:06

O'Neil, our guide, writing shotgun.

1:08

O'Neil is a Catholic peace activist. A

1:11

member of the PlowShares movement, a group

1:13

that takes its name from a passage in the book

1:15

of Isiah, where the faithful are told

1:17

to beat their swords into PlowShares. He

1:19

spent the past four decades committing acts

1:22

of civil disobedience in the name of disarmament,

1:25

things like sabotaging ballistic missiles,

1:27

throwing blood on the Pentagon and vandalizing

1:30

naval

1:30

bases. And when you commit crimes

1:32

on federal property, your try in

1:34

federal court. Back in nineteen

1:36

eighty two was my first time actually

1:38

being in the penitentiary. I

1:41

had been arrested at Fort Bragg in North

1:43

Carolina because at that time

1:45

Fort Bragg was training El

1:47

Salvador in death squads. So

1:49

we did a protest there, a group of

1:52

us, and I got a ninety day

1:54

federal prison

1:54

sentence. After O'Neil was released

1:56

from that first stunt, he got right back

1:58

to it, taking part in another more ambitious

2:01

protest. On Easter Sunday, in nineteen

2:03

eighty four, I joined seven other pacifists,

2:06

and we broke in to the Martin Marietta

2:09

bomb plant in Orlando, Florida.

2:12

We hammered on a missile

2:14

launcher that was in the work

2:15

yard, and we hammered on some components

2:18

of the purging two missile.

2:20

This time, O'Neil was given

2:21

a three year sentence to be served in the

2:23

Atlanta penitentiary. This

2:25

is where I was. I was just right up the hill

2:28

here. You could turn around and

2:30

we'll go back up the other

2:31

side. He's pointing to a narrow brick building

2:33

on the prison's east side, the minimum

2:35

security block. It's a little ways down from

2:37

the imposing Victorian era building that

2:39

serves as the main facility. And

2:41

as soon as I get here, I

2:43

find out that there

2:46

are three thousand Cubans in the penitentiary

2:48

living right next door to me. Because they were

2:50

housed in separate buildings, Anil didn't

2:52

have much interaction with these immigration detainees.

2:56

But as a minimum security prisoner,

2:58

he was assigned to landscaping duty.

3:00

Which had relatively little supervision. And

3:02

so we got the lay of the land pretty quickly. Lay

3:04

of the

3:04

land. I can go out here and walk around. I think there's about

3:07

forty acres here. And so

3:09

I could walk around, go so drive up here and I'll show

3:11

you. One day, I'm out here on the grounds just

3:13

on the behind the penitentiary, and I

3:15

see a fire burning, and I'm like, what sale

3:17

is this? You know? Because I've never seen a fire before.

3:20

And I go up to it. And sure

3:22

enough, it's a bonfire. They're burning

3:24

all the Cuban stuff in it. Like I've

3:26

seen half photographs, letters,

3:29

pages from bibles, clothes,

3:31

and there are linens and things like that. They just

3:33

rate the stuff out. And just

3:36

put it in huge piles. Anything that could get

3:38

a you know, could be lit on fire was

3:40

gone.

3:43

When Patrick O'Neil saw the smoldering piles

3:45

of photos, letters, and bibles, it

3:48

was late October of nineteen eighty

3:50

four. The story we told you about

3:52

last time about Judge Shub, about his orders

3:54

releasing those like Genera Sarobo Gonzalez,

3:57

who had never committed a crime in the US.

3:59

Well, by the fall of nineteen eighty four, the appeals

4:01

court had struck down almost all of Judge

4:04

Schuh's

4:04

orders, and the release of detainees had

4:06

come to a standstill. For

4:08

those who came to Atlanta Street from the docks,

4:10

they'd now been detained in the federal Penn

4:12

for over four years. They

4:14

came here as refugees, but now

4:16

they'd found themselves indefinitely detained

4:18

with no due process. Inside, what

4:21

had long been considered one of the most dangerous

4:23

present in the country, and their hopelessness

4:25

and despair was just about to

4:27

boil over. From

4:57

NPR, this is White Lies. I'm

4:59

Chip Brantley. And I'm Andrew Beck Grace.

5:03

Patrick O'Neil, the

5:05

radical Catholic peace activist serving

5:07

time at the Atlanta Federal and a tentry in the fall

5:09

of nineteen eighty four, stood looking

5:11

at a still smoking pile of personal

5:13

effects. Photographs, letters,

5:16

handwritten lists of births and deaths from

5:18

the front pages of the bible. O'Neil

5:21

knew that this stuff was all prisoner had.

5:23

And so this peculiar scene more than anything,

5:26

it seemed cruel and spiteful. He

5:28

wasn't exactly sure what was going on here.

5:30

But even without the full story, O'Neil

5:33

felt he had to do something about it.

5:35

Nobody in the glass tower saw me, so I'm

5:37

stopping out the stuff, right, filling a bag

5:40

with it. These days, the prison is ring by

5:42

fence and razor wire. But back then,

5:44

if you were in the minimum security camp as

5:46

O'Neil was and had a job that required

5:48

you to roam the grounds as he did Believe it

5:50

or not, you can actually just stroll up to the sidewalk

5:52

and work done boulevard and pass off that

5:54

bag of possessions to someone on the

5:56

outside. And so that's exactly

5:58

what O'Neil planned to do. And

6:00

I call up a friend of mine who comes up and meets

6:02

me here on McDonough, and that's

6:04

Karl Ladeau. Carla Dudak

6:06

was another activist who lived in Atlanta.

6:08

To make ends meet, she baked pies at a local

6:11

restaurant. Rubart was her specialty.

6:13

She'd been introduced to O'Neil by a mutual

6:15

friend and had been corresponding with him in few

6:17

weeks he'd been imprisoned at the Atlanta

6:19

pin. When she got the call from him,

6:21

it triggered a faint memory of reading about

6:23

the Cuban detainees. And I remember

6:26

a few years before having sitting

6:29

on the bus reading the newspaper and there was this

6:31

big spread about the Cubans that I remember just

6:33

thinking, oh, that's too bad. Like so

6:35

many others, Duedek had heard years before

6:37

about the Cuban men being detained inside

6:39

the pin. But what was happening to them

6:41

then seemed complicated and far

6:43

off. And while sad and unfortunate, not

6:46

something she could even really wrap her head around.

6:48

But hearing that these men were still there,

6:51

nearly four years after she'd read about them

6:53

in the newspaper, she just couldn't

6:55

believe that they were still being detained.

6:57

It just it was this whole idea

6:59

that you just keep somebody in prison

7:02

forever for no

7:03

reason, and and it was just nobody

7:06

was paying attention. So

7:07

when O'Neil asked her to meet him on McDonough

7:10

so he could hand over the bag with the remnants

7:12

of the bonfire in it, she went right over.

7:14

So luckily, you know, I just

7:16

always felt like the holy spirits on my side,

7:18

and Barla comes up and meets

7:21

me, and I give her a bag full

7:23

of all the singed stuff when

7:25

she brings to the Atlanta constitution.

7:34

Duette passed the stop to a reporter at the

7:36

Atlanta institution as the city's morning

7:38

newspaper was known then. And from

7:40

there, a story began to unravel. It

7:42

all started a few weeks earlier with a bedsheet.

7:45

The word, liver type written across

7:47

it. A group of the men being

7:49

detained had unfurl the bedsheet in the art

7:51

of the prison. A small protest, a

7:53

demonstration, really, and a peaceful one.

7:56

But it set off an escalating chain of

7:58

events behind the wall. First,

8:00

guards in riot gear broke up the demonstration,

8:03

then a lockdown. For more

8:05

than a week, the men were confined in their cells

8:07

for twenty four hours a day. Lawyers

8:09

for the Cubans would later claim that during the

8:11

lockdown, the prison stopped issuing toilet paper

8:13

and shut off water to the cells. In

8:16

protests of this

8:16

lockdown, some of the detainees began letting

8:19

small fires in their cells. The

8:21

warden just responded by going

8:23

to every cell block and

8:26

sweeping out anything that was combustible.

8:29

Well, of course, that meant people lost not only

8:31

their clothes, and their linens and

8:33

things like that, but they lost all their personal

8:35

property. Anything that could get you know, could

8:37

be lit on fire was

8:39

gone. The board just didn't give a damn.

8:42

Thus, the burnpile that O'Neil had found on

8:44

landscaping duty that day. The charred

8:46

remains of photos, letters, bibles,

8:49

For some of the men detained at the Penn, these were

8:51

the only personal belongings they had left

8:53

in the world. A week or so

8:55

later, prison officials finally released them

8:57

from lockdown. What happened

8:59

next, some would describe as an outburst.

9:02

Later in federal court, the US government

9:04

would call it a riot. Basically,

9:06

what happened was that after having their property destroyed

9:09

and being confined for more than two weeks in their

9:11

cells, the Cubans just lost it.

9:13

They took over the unit. Pushing the guards out

9:15

and then set some bed sheets on fire and protest.

9:18

It lasted several hours and was finally broken

9:20

up with tear gas and fire hoses. At

9:22

which point, guards came in and escorted

9:24

all the men out of the unit. A

9:27

Cuban detainee named Jose Hernandez

9:29

Meso who seemed to be the main organizer.

9:32

And in a criminal complaint filed soon after

9:34

in Federal District Court, the feds charged

9:36

Hernandez Mesa with inciting Orion.

9:42

And it's worth pausing here for a moment to consider

9:44

an incredible irony that's about to happen.

9:47

Remember, since the government has always contended,

9:49

that legally speaking, the Mario Cubans

9:51

being detained in Atlanta are not in

9:53

the country. That instead, they're

9:55

floating off the coast of Key West they've

9:58

been denied due process to challenge

10:00

their continued detention, not

10:02

guaranteed access to counsel or the constitutional

10:04

protections of our court system. But

10:07

the second, the federal government charges Hernandez

10:09

Mesa. It's like he becomes Cinderella.

10:12

Granted for at least the duration of the trial,

10:14

access to due process. He

10:16

can call witnesses. He can answer

10:18

the charges against him. And in particular,

10:21

it means he's finally granted access to an

10:23

attorney who will take on his

10:24

case. The federal defenders program

10:27

is nationwide network of public defenders,

10:29

but for the federal system. And when

10:31

the Jose Hernandez Mesofile came into

10:33

the office, The case was assigned to a

10:35

new attorney, Paul Cash. And

10:38

so Hernandez Mesa became his

10:40

client. And on that day, I meet one

10:42

of the most charismatic human beings I've ever

10:44

met in my life, José Hernandez Mesa. Five

10:46

foot four bright blue eyes, built

10:48

like a Bantamweight box we only spoke

10:50

Spanish and we always spoke through an interpreter who

10:53

I use almost exclusively Alba males,

10:55

Alba's wonderful people. Again,

10:57

an interpreter is really good. There is no

10:59

nothing between

11:00

you. She's just a part of the conversation. It's Albemails.

11:02

She's the interpreter you heard from last time.

11:05

The one who remembered the joy and the pen

11:07

on the day, Generos Saroma Gonzales was

11:09

released. And just as she had

11:11

with Saroma Gonzales, she would interpret

11:13

for Jose Hernandez Mesa throughout

11:15

his legal proceedings.

11:17

Mesa was very charismatic. Very

11:19

charismatic. Little boy. Tiny

11:22

guy, but

11:23

charisma from head to

11:25

toe. Hernandez Mesa's charisma, his

11:27

energy, it stood in stark contrast

11:30

to the setting for the first attorney client meeting

11:32

in the Atlanta

11:33

pad. It was just horrible

11:35

the conditions. We went out there in

11:37

the middle of the day. He's like nineteen ten

11:40

brick buildings with no ventilation. Fair

11:42

barely any electricity. It was it was bad.

11:44

No air conditioning. On a summer's day, it would

11:46

be a hundred and ten degrees, and it was horrible

11:49

horrible horrible place inside that giant

11:51

wall. But we're, you know, going out and researching.

11:53

And I we have wonderful investigator, Susan

11:55

Miller, who goes out with us as we're interviewing

11:57

witnesses. So we interviewed witnesses.

12:00

We documented scenes. We did background

12:02

investigations.

12:03

That's

12:04

the federal defender's office investigator Susan

12:06

Miller. And when I worked the case,

12:09

I was in the units. I mean, we

12:11

saw with our own eyes what

12:13

what the living conditions were, and

12:16

how these men were treated as animals.

12:19

I mean, that is what I saw.

12:21

Miller is retired now. Lives on Alabama's

12:23

Gulf Coast. And during our conversation at

12:26

her dining room table, She walked us through her

12:28

investigation and described her impressions

12:30

of what was at stake in the Hernandez Mesa

12:32

case.

12:34

There are clients on paper. Well,

12:36

that's what the government sees, and guess

12:39

that's what they have to see. But

12:41

we got to know the human. You know, we

12:43

got to know the person. And

12:46

you you get to know what

12:48

is painful to them. You

12:51

know, he had he had hopes and

12:53

he had dreams and and

12:55

I had a great sense with

12:57

Jose in particular that

13:01

what they were doing is

13:04

they were trying to speak. About

13:08

their condition, about

13:10

being detained without

13:13

the benefit of of due

13:15

process. We're

13:17

not supposed to do that in the

13:19

United States.

13:21

As Kish and Miller worked, they focused

13:23

on a bigger story than the one told in the

13:25

government court filings. The earlier

13:27

demonstration with the bedsheet, the subsequent

13:29

lockdown, and the burn pile with all their

13:31

personal items. And they came to understand

13:33

just how dire how combustible the

13:36

situation

13:36

was. And so they leave them locked

13:39

down for another two weeks. And

13:41

it's like, what do you expect?

13:45

To happen when you do this. What

13:47

do you expect that they're gonna

13:49

come out docile? No.

13:52

No. They're angry and you have stripped

13:54

them of the last

13:56

bit of home and

13:58

dignity that they had. So what

14:00

do you expect? It was this line of thinking

14:02

that would become the foundation of their case,

14:05

their defense of Hernandez Mesa. You

14:07

can't look at the night of the riot in isolation

14:10

they'd argue. You have to widen the aperture.

14:12

You have to think about the flooded cells and the torch

14:15

bed sheets in a broader context. Consider

14:18

the compounding cruelty leading up

14:20

to the night of November first. And

14:22

then two, you had to look at what happened next

14:24

and how the prison officials responded to

14:26

this so called

14:27

riot. They beat the shit

14:29

out of those guys. They brought

14:32

all the staff pretty

14:34

much from the whole institution, and

14:36

there was a side door and

14:38

they marched the Maryells

14:41

out of the side door, lined

14:44

them up against events.

14:48

And staff came along and proceeded to

14:50

beat the living daylights out of them.

14:55

And they did it in

14:58

in front of the AWB building

15:01

where the Americans were,

15:03

which meant potential witnesses. A

15:05

whole cell block full. Somebody

15:07

must have seen

15:08

something. Right? What I would have

15:10

done first is

15:12

identify who was in that cell

15:14

house. Can I start getting

15:16

calls from Americans? Say, you

15:18

need to come talk to us? We

15:21

saw things. You need to come to I mean,

15:23

again, I get chills. Because these

15:25

men's bodies are in the control

15:27

of the United States Bureau Prisons. That

15:30

is so incredibly courageous and

15:33

brave. What they saw

15:36

was guards literally March

15:40

Cubans out of the unit,

15:43

out of b cell house, line

15:45

them up, face first against

15:47

the wall, and use batons on

15:49

them. And kick them and

15:52

punch them. That incensed

15:55

them. I mean, they were they

15:57

were livid about

15:58

it. They were livid. And

16:01

we started hearing this recurring theme.

16:03

There is no way they were rioting. It was total

16:05

self defense, but I am not coming to court to

16:07

testify about any of

16:08

this. They had nothing to

16:10

gain out of this and absolutely everything

16:14

to

16:14

lose. When it came down to it at trial,

16:17

they were too afraid. To

16:19

testify. Until we ran

16:21

into Ralph Delayo. Ralph

16:28

Delleio. Delleio's from Boston originally

16:31

alleged to be tied in with organized crime there,

16:33

and he was serving time in Atlanta for string

16:35

of bank properties at a subsequent prison

16:37

at school. Ralph is

16:40

huge in mountain of a man, and Susan

16:42

was the only one as we're interviewing who said,

16:44

looking down his reps with this one case murder,

16:46

would that happen to be a hit? And

16:48

he goes,

16:49

yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean,

16:51

he was a hit man. And he said, I got no problem coming

16:53

in testifying. Once Delleo

16:55

agreed to testify, other American

16:57

prisoners came forward as did

16:59

a few guards and some Mario detainees.

17:02

So they had eyewitnesses willing to testify.

17:05

They had the defense strategy. And

17:07

as a trial loomed, Paul Keish, huddled

17:09

one last time with his client, Jose Hernandez

17:11

Mesa. They'd opted for a preliminary

17:13

approach to the

17:14

case. And together, they steal their nerves

17:16

before the court proceedings got underway. Then

17:19

he said, you're young, but they will theory

17:21

in in that the way that romance

17:23

languages translate into English, it sounds

17:25

so much more mollifluism, romantic

17:27

and poetic. I just we had a personal

17:30

human connection. He believed

17:32

in me. I was so young and green, but

17:34

I've always been kind of a fighter and

17:36

he's a fighter and we were in a fight together.

17:40

From the opening statements, it became clear that

17:42

the prosecution wanted to have that fight on

17:44

narrow ground. The government, they're gonna

17:46

present case of they're in custody, one

17:48

day, there's a riot, they're therefore guilty

17:50

without any context. But the witnesses

17:52

that Kish called to the stand kept sticking

17:55

out more and more ground, giving testimony

17:57

about prison conditions the lockdown,

17:59

the beatings, the indefinite detention,

18:01

the constitution. And at

18:03

one

18:04

point, the judge had called the lawyers to the bench when

18:06

one of our Americans testified in know, at

18:08

the bench, you're supposed to be quiet. He said it loud enough

18:10

clearly, so the draw I don't believe a damn word

18:12

that guy says

18:14

until we brought the next and the next

18:16

and the next and the next and they all said

18:18

the same thing. He even called Deborah

18:20

Abel as an expert witness. They

18:23

were in an amazingly scary

18:26

federal penitentiary that

18:28

was the most maximum cure

18:31

pementiary in the whole federal

18:33

system.

18:34

Deborah Abel, the legal aid lawyer who

18:36

had represented Gennaro Saruman Gonzales

18:38

who by this point had spent years representing

18:41

the men detained at the Atlanta pin and

18:43

arguably knew more than anyone about

18:45

the circumstances of their

18:46

confinement. It was very effective think in

18:48

setting the background. The government tried to cross

18:50

examiner which was a foolish move because

18:52

she knew the issue better than they did plus

18:54

every time they've tried to go somewhere Her point

18:56

was, yeah, but the United States constitution is not

18:58

providing any rights to these human beings.

19:01

And according to you, mister

19:02

prosecutor, they'd have no rights and will never

19:04

have any rights for the rest of their natural

19:06

lives. Then it was time for their star

19:08

witness, Ralph Delleo. To

19:10

bring all the prisoners into it's a bit

19:12

of a

19:13

work. You gotta do a lot of paperwork. And so they are

19:15

in a little holding pan, and you're in the middle of trials, so

19:17

you're not really can't see what's going on. So we call

19:20

Ralph Deleyo, whether we understand the door opens, the

19:22

marshals bring Ralph has gussied himself

19:24

up with a pair of horned rimmed glasses that

19:26

is so

19:26

professorial. It's almost like he's got patches

19:28

on his elbows. Ralph, almost

19:31

have the jury eating from his

19:33

hand. I can't do this without

19:36

almost play acting yet, but

19:39

On direct examination, Ralph

19:41

took his glasses off and

19:43

pointed at the jury with

19:45

them. Just wanna say since this is radio.

19:47

What you're doing right now is the classic

19:49

like law and order or matlock lawyer

19:51

interrogating? Yes.

19:54

I I mean, Ralph was

19:57

just really

20:00

he's a unique character. But

20:02

he told the truth. Which

20:04

is when the Cubans came out when ordered

20:06

to do so they were beaten to a pulp. As

20:08

the trial wound down, Kish was still casting

20:10

about for his closing argument. Something

20:12

that would appeal to the jury's basic sense

20:14

of fairness. Something that would allow them

20:17

to put the charges against Jose Hernandez Mesa

20:19

in a broader moral

20:20

context. I remember this like it was yesterday.

20:23

So there was a

20:24

downtown YMCA I used to work

20:26

out at, and I would go for a run out of there.

20:28

So So

20:29

I was running in the dark. And I just had

20:31

this, you know, how when you work out sometimes if

20:33

you deprive your brain of oxygen, only

20:35

one or two ideas can say in your head. And then

20:37

a couple steps later, I had the the thing

20:39

that became the theme of our argument, which is,

20:42

why are we blaming them because

20:44

the United States government put all this together. So I came

20:46

up with the thing of, you know, if you have a can of gas

20:48

and you gotta match and

20:51

you put the match into the gas cannon

20:53

explodes. Who do you blame? The match?

20:56

Who do you blame? The people who

20:58

created the situation? Or the people

21:00

who reacted because of it. After

21:03

Kish delivered the closing argument, the

21:05

jury took less than one hour to decide

21:07

that they were not going to blame Jose

21:10

Hernandez

21:10

Mesa. The

21:11

jury

21:11

comes back in like no time flat. You know, clearly,

21:14

clearly repudiating the US government's

21:17

position.

21:18

I love the word acquittal. The jury

21:20

saw what we saw. And

21:23

and they said to

21:25

Jose, you're right. We get

21:27

this. This isn't right.

21:30

What we're doing, what our government is

21:32

doing in our name is not right.

21:44

reporter covering the trial wrote that when

21:46

the verdict was read Hernandez Mesa,

21:49

quote, rested his head face down

21:51

on his folded arms on the defense table

21:53

and sobbed quietly. When

21:57

the reporter talked to the foreman of the jury,

21:59

an insurance executive who lived in the suburbs

22:02

northeast of Atlanta, he said he was,

22:04

quote, ashamed of the way the US government

22:06

was treating the Cuban detainees, end

22:08

quote. Another juror said he found

22:10

testimony of the American prisoners more

22:13

credible than that of the prison officials and

22:15

guards. A forced brewer told

22:17

the reporter that she thought it was, quote, unfair

22:19

that the Cubans had no voice, no dubrasas.

22:25

The strange thing about this little was that the

22:27

defendant didn't leave the courtroom free

22:29

man. Because even though the federal

22:32

government and treated Jose Hernandez Mesa

22:34

like he was on US soil, when it charged

22:36

him with inciting a riot, After

22:38

the acquittal, the government went back to treating

22:40

him like illegal fiction, like

22:42

his body wasn't here at all, like

22:45

he was out at sea asking to come

22:47

in. And because they decided

22:49

that he was exclutable, he had no

22:51

right to have rights in his country. The

22:53

clock struck midnight and his time as Cinderella

22:56

afforded representation and due process

22:58

had ended. So he would remain

23:00

in detention. Not

23:10

long after the trial, Paul Kish and Susan

23:12

Miller and the interpreter, Albemales, went

23:14

to visit Jose Hernandez Mesa one

23:16

last

23:16

time. They brought him in. He was dressed up

23:21

almost like in an insane asylum. He had a straight

23:23

jacket on. He was

23:26

chained,

23:26

manocled, and we had to work really hard

23:29

to convince them, at least, you know, chain him

23:31

to the chair so we can talk together.

23:33

They talked to guard into releasing one

23:35

of his arms so that he could smoke a cigarette.

23:37

And then they just sat and talked. One

23:40

of them took a photograph of Mesa. In

23:42

it, you see him sitting in front of a window in a

23:44

starched prison uniform. The photo

23:46

has captured him in profile. He's pointing

23:48

up in the air as if in the middle of a story,

23:51

a cigarette in his right hand. His

23:53

left hand is chained to the manacles around

23:55

his

23:55

waist. This photo incidentally

23:58

is in Paul Keisha's office to this very

24:00

day.

24:01

We kept in touch after you

24:04

know, for a while, but then as I say,

24:06

I got married and life completely

24:08

changed. For a while, Albemails

24:11

exchanged letters with Hernandez

24:12

Mesa. And when we visited her,

24:14

she found the letters and read the last one,

24:17

he'd sent her.

24:18

My sister, Alba, God

24:21

willing, when you receive this letter,

24:23

you are fine surrounded by

24:26

the divine mantle of

24:28

happiness as well as your

24:30

family. I am fine. I've

24:33

made up my mind that this cell is

24:35

my home because they

24:38

are not going to upset

24:42

my nervous condition. I

24:44

do a lot of exercise every day.

24:46

I sleep a lot, I eat,

24:49

and I'm not working so you know how it

24:51

is. Well, I'll I'm so grateful

24:53

to you and Paul and Susan, for

24:55

how good you all have been to me.

24:58

I have no way to repay you.

25:00

Believe it from the bottom of my heart

25:02

that I love you all very much. Well,

25:05

my sister, this is it for now

25:07

from your brother who loves you and

25:09

give Paul and Susan my

25:11

greetings That's it. Answer

25:14

me. Please don't send this

25:16

letter to the mailbox

25:18

of forgetfulness. Lisa,

25:45

Hey, guys. Hey. How are

25:47

you?

25:48

Well, I was actually taking a nap.

25:51

Right. Had to call me that it was fine.

25:55

Well,

25:55

I'm glad you got a nap. How are things in Cuba?

25:58

Hey, guys. So sorry.

26:00

Hey. Hey, Maria. How are

26:02

you?

26:02

Hi. Hi. Fine. Thanks.

26:05

So we'd like to introduce you to two people who've

26:07

been working with us on this story. This

26:09

is Manuel. I am Manuel Gallardo,

26:11

and I am the research Historian and

26:14

interpreter.

26:15

And this is my rim.

26:20

Man well in my ring, both live in Havana.

26:23

And for more than year now, we've been doing

26:25

these WhatsApp calls with them. Whenever

26:27

our search for the men on the roof would turn up a name,

26:29

We'd send that name to Manuela Marie. That's

26:31

what we did with Jose Hernandez

26:33

Mesa. What's

26:34

the story? Have you been able to find anything about

26:36

Mesa? The thing is, This

26:38

is a very common last name.

26:41

This is a very common

26:43

first

26:44

name. So essentially, we

26:46

are looking for a needle in a haystack.

26:49

After his trial was over, Mesa was transferred

26:51

from Atlanta to the Federal Prison

26:53

in Talladega, Alabama, where he

26:55

spent more years in immigration detention. The

26:58

last trace we found of him in the files in the basement

27:01

of the Atlanta legal aid society was a

27:03

notice of his deportation from Talladega.

27:06

He was deported to Cuba on September

27:08

ninth, nineteen ninety one. Just

27:10

over a week after the Talladega Prison uprising

27:13

ended.

27:13

He had been one of the hundred and sixteen men

27:15

let out of their cells when the takeover began.

27:18

He very well could have been one of those men on the roof.

27:21

The interesting thing about Masita

27:23

is that the fact that he remains so elusive

27:36

first of all, he does not appear

27:38

alive. He does not appear active

27:40

in the system, but he doesn't

27:43

appear as

27:43

dead. Also.

27:46

And so you feel

27:48

pretty confident about death records in Cuba that

27:50

you would be able to find him if he if he was

27:52

deceased? Yeah.

27:54

Yeah. Yeah. We are. When we met with Polish,

27:56

we scanned the photo he has of Mesa from the

27:58

mid eighties and sent it to Mariamen Manuel

28:01

to help them with her

28:02

search. So from the beginning

28:04

of the scenes, Messida was rather

28:06

a dilutive figure and we were unable

28:08

to find him directly. So

28:10

we showed them the picture. And

28:14

in most cases, the the answer

28:16

was the same, yes. We met him.

28:18

Yes. We met him. The first person

28:20

we asked mentioned that

28:22

he was from Matanha's. But

28:24

as we continued to ask

28:27

people began to locate

28:29

him in Las Vegas, which

28:31

is one of the central provinces of Cuba.

28:33

With this in mind, we narrowed

28:36

the search to Las

28:37

Vegas, but we haven't been successful.

28:39

So what do you think what do you think

28:41

happened to him? Proxibility

28:44

that we have been considering is the fact that he

28:46

left the country illegally. I mean, he

28:48

could be in the United States. It's only

28:50

that he

28:53

left you by illegally, so there are

28:55

no records of his leaving the country.

28:57

Right. And that's so common

28:59

these days, especially that, I guess, that that's a

29:01

very a realistic

29:03

possibility, I guess. I

29:05

think so. Yeah. You

29:07

know, in his particular case, and

29:09

I'm talking from my honcious

29:12

here. In his particular case, I

29:14

don't think it left the country. I think

29:17

that it left his

29:19

his home province and his living somewhere else

29:21

in Cuba. I think this guy does

29:23

not want to be found. And he's

29:25

actually I mean, if not actually,

29:28

he's quite quite

29:31

metaphorically

29:32

living under a rock. It's a it's a

29:34

big island.

29:36

Big island, but it's not that big anywhere.

29:39

It's a big world. It's really hard to find somebody

29:41

-- Yeah. --

29:41

especially somebody who doesn't wanna be found, you

29:43

know. Well, we really appreciate

29:46

the time. Thank you so much. Okay,

29:48

guys. K. Thank you. Bye.

29:50

Okay. Sounds good.

29:51

See you there. Bye. Bye.

29:56

Marie men men well tracked down all

29:58

the Jose Hernandez Maces in Cuba.

30:00

And we tried every way we know how to find him in

30:02

the US. But after nineteen ninety

30:05

one, there's just no trace of him.

30:07

It really was as if the earth had swallowed

30:09

him.

30:13

Yeah. Okay. If you wanna just do that.

30:16

No. No parking signs.

30:18

Yeah. I mean, maybe there's a place we could just park

30:21

on the street. Yeah.

30:21

Let me go. I'm gonna I'm gonna turn around. Yeah.

30:24

Patrick O'Neil, a peace advocate who

30:26

helped raise awareness of applied to the Cubans while

30:28

he was incarcerated at the Atlanta federal pin

30:30

had one more place he wanted to take

30:33

us during our tour of the prison last

30:35

summer. It's really questionable how many inmates

30:37

are even here. You know, I think they've

30:39

diminished the population significantly.

30:42

But I definitely had a sense that there's nobody

30:44

up in the guard towers anymore. The

30:46

prison is more than a hundred and twenty years

30:48

old now. And it's still open, at

30:50

least for the time being. Like dozens

30:52

of times throughout its history, it's recently

30:55

come under intense scrutiny for overcrowding

30:57

and violence. It's not used to

30:59

house immigration detainees

31:00

anymore. And as a result of a congressional

31:03

investigation, today, it's only about

31:05

half full. How

31:06

many federal prisons have you been up?

31:10

Six or seven? No.

31:13

We parked on the west side of the prison. And then

31:15

walk toward the railroad tracks that run behind

31:17

the facility.

31:19

So is that work? Will you continue

31:21

that work?

31:23

You know, Sorry. I shouldn't ask

31:25

you. Well, no. It's you know, the thing is it's not that.

31:27

It's just that you you kinda

31:30

you kinda move with the flow of these things.

31:33

Like, I turned sixty five in solitary confinement

31:36

last year. Yeah. I'm getting

31:38

a little older. Yeah. You know?

31:40

I don't know what I'm gonna

31:41

do. I mean, I hope I have the faith

31:43

to keep resisting, you know.

31:46

How far down is the cemetery for sure?

31:49

About fifteen minutes. Well,

31:53

Patrick recently walked these same tracks with

31:55

his daughter. He wanted to show her

31:57

the prison cemetery. When

31:59

Patrick took the burned remains of the Cuban's

32:01

personal effects and handed them off to Carla

32:03

Dudak, he helped raise awareness of the plight

32:05

of detainees but he also drew the

32:07

ire of the warden, who's quick to punish

32:10

him. Instead of rearranging walks

32:12

around the prison, raking

32:13

leaves, he was now heading up the crew

32:15

tasked with digging graves.

32:19

This is it. That's a graveyard. The

32:22

graveyard sits on a rolling hill, bordered

32:24

by a thicket of oak and pecan trees.

32:26

The tombstones are simple, flat markers

32:29

assessed in the ground, with only the name

32:31

of the year of birth and the year of

32:32

death. You'll see gray that's down at the

32:34

bottom of this hill here that are from

32:36

the early nineteen hundreds. This is the these

32:39

are the first graves

32:40

here. This is this is a nineteen

32:42

o two death. Wow.

32:43

So that's the year the prison opened. They're already buried

32:45

in Nineteen two death. So we

32:48

go up here, you work your way up.

32:50

As you work your way up the hill, you go forward

32:52

in time. A lot of these are depression

32:55

era graves, which mean people probably

32:58

probably just their families were too poor

33:00

to to claim the

33:01

body. The only people who

33:03

wind up buried in a prison cemetery are

33:05

those who have no one to claim them. And

33:08

so despite the many deaths that have happened

33:10

here in over a century since the prison has

33:12

been in

33:12

operation, there are only a couple of hundred

33:14

graves here.

33:17

So that's eighty four. So

33:20

that's right before I got here. Eighty

33:23

five eighty five. So

33:25

these are the Cubans right here. Yeah.

33:27

This is a lot of Cubans now. Look at the numbers

33:29

here. This is a lot of people

33:31

like just in that one year. Let's see how many

33:34

let's see how many Cubans end

33:36

up in here. It is eighty four

33:51

According to a document compiled by the Atlanta

33:53

Eagle Aid Society, thirty two Cuban

33:56

men died in the Atlanta federal pant

33:58

between nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty seven.

34:00

There were homicides, heart attacks, the

34:03

vague natural causes.

34:05

But nearly a third of them died by suicide.

34:08

So these were the guys I was burying right

34:10

here. This whole row here, I

34:12

probably was at the gravesite service for everybody

34:14

here. I mean, I think we did a nice job as

34:16

best we could under the circumstances of

34:19

honoring the dead. Barring the dead like the

34:21

corporal work of mercy. I mean, I think it was meaningful.

34:23

think we we felt sincere pain

34:26

for the loss of this guy's life, especially

34:28

if it was a suicide. And, you know, there were

34:30

no families that ever came to these things.

34:33

There was never a time when any of

34:35

the deaths of these men was announced

34:37

publicly. Like the prison did not

34:39

put out a press release saying, Riaz

34:42

Gonzalez Aurelio thirty

34:44

two years old, died on

34:46

Monday at the at the federal

34:48

penitentiary in Atlanta. Like, there's

34:50

no account of it. So these people all die

34:52

anonymous Like nobody knows their names except

34:54

you guys. Right? I mean, you're here.

34:56

You're seeing it. This is proof. But but,

34:59

I mean, look at the whole place and look at the components

35:01

it. Right? We're in a graveyard, all these men

35:03

died here. This is not the place you wanna

35:05

die.

35:16

We sit around for a while longer. Taking

35:18

it all in. And then when we were just

35:20

about to leave, Patrick asked if he could say

35:22

a small

35:22

prayer. So God, we come to this

35:24

place of despair. All

35:26

of these children of yours who died very

35:29

young and having suffered terribly.

35:32

And we know these are your children, Lord, and

35:34

we just ask God to help

35:36

us change our ways to abolish

35:39

prisons in this maltreatment of

35:42

the vulnerable in our society. We

35:44

make these present in the name of a loving god, the

35:46

Prince of peace, the lord of lords and the author

35:48

of life, amen. If

36:04

you were one of the Cuban men detained in

36:06

Atlanta, the misery wasn't just the

36:09

terrible conditions. It was the specter

36:11

that you might be there forever, that

36:14

you could be held indefinitely without

36:16

any explanation. That it was

36:18

arbitrary, that there might

36:20

not even be any explanation. The

36:23

Rudolph Giuliani, the Associate Attorney

36:25

General at the time, had told sixty minutes

36:27

this. These people are illegally in this

36:29

country. They can, by law, be confined

36:32

by the attorney general,

36:33

indeterminately. And the eleventh Circuit

36:36

Court of Appeals, just one step below

36:38

the Supreme Court of the United States had

36:40

gone even further when they told attorneys

36:42

for the men detained at the Penn, quote,

36:44

the federal government can hold these people

36:47

in prison until they die. And

36:49

for the men in the Atlanta penitentiary, This

36:52

wasn't hypothetical. It meant

36:54

that one day you might wind up in the prison

36:56

graveyard down in that thicket of oaks

36:59

off the railroad tracks.

37:03

But then on December fourteenth eighty

37:06

four, something completely unexpected

37:08

happened. For the first time in the Reagan administration,

37:11

the United States and Cuba have reached an

37:13

agreement. Undesirables who came

37:15

here in the big Cuban boat that four years ago

37:17

will be set back in return. Throughout nineteen

37:19

eighty four, US State Department and representatives

37:22

of the Cuban government had been meeting in secret

37:24

to hammer out an agreement. The

37:27

agreement was about a list a

37:29

list of names. The names of

37:31

two thousand seven hundred and forty six Cubans,

37:33

the US wanted to send back. The

37:36

government refused to reveal who was on the

37:38

list. It was a secret list. Made

37:40

in secret, kept in secret. And

37:43

when asked about this list. It would often

37:45

say that the men on the list were the drags,

37:48

the criminals, the worst of the worst. Trust

37:51

us, they said. And for nearly

37:53

forty years now, people have been trying to get access

37:55

to this

37:55

list. There have been public records

37:58

requests, there have been lawsuits, a

38:00

parade of attorneys and advocates and

38:02

journalists have sought it out, but no

38:04

one has got in their hands on the list.

38:06

We got a package, a source

38:10

who said they had something they believed

38:12

was the list. Send it to

38:14

us. And now

38:17

It is sitting unopened on

38:19

the table and in front of us. That's

38:25

next time on White Lies. If

38:54

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39:18

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Little edits the show with help from Bruce

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39:43

thanks to Radiohead for the use of their song, The

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tape in this episode comes from the Hoover Institution

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Special thanks to Sally Sandich, Susan

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Gerrit Comer Yates, David Payne, and

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Wilmer Fred Grim, Stephanie Kerns,

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