Producing a one-hour documentary is like producing a short movie, but much more intense, involving countless hours of reporting, source relationship-building and fact-checking — things the viewer never sees. For "Lost in Detention," we had a team of dedicated editors and reporters at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, as well at FRONTLINE and the Center for Investigative Reporting, and journalist Maria Hinojosa and her team at the Futuro Media Group. In addition, film and journalism graduate students from American University and New York University also worked on the project. All helped investigate immigration enforcement and detention over more than a year. 

Toward the end of the project, we received a cache of government documents that helped put our Willacy Detention Center case study in perspective.  The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Workshop through separate Freedom of Information Act requests, included more than 170 records of sexual abuse claims over the past four years. We built a database to log and categorize the records. It was no small feat. We sifted through more than 800 pages worth of documents to code and categorize a myriad of sexual-abuse complaints. 

In the end, we discovered widespread claims of sexual abuse across more than 50 facilities. They produced the best window yet into detainees’ claims of abuse inside these detention centers.  

Our team on the documentary included:

Rick Young

PRODUCED BY
Rick Young

Margaret Ebrahim

Catherine Rentz

CORRESPONDENT
Maria Hinojosa

REPORTER

Andrew Becker, Center for Investigative Reporting

EDITOR
Leslie Atkins

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER
Fritz Kramer

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Travis Fox

CAMERA

Craig Cooper

Larry Engel

Tim Grucza

Ben McCoy

Timothy Wheeler

SOUND

Chris Conway

Erika Sampson

ADDITIONAL EDITOR

Steve Audette

ADDITIONAL CAMERA
Leslie Atkins

Tara Kocourek

Fritz Kramer

Peter Pearce

Catherine Rentz

ADDITIONAL REPORTERS

Kari Barber

Meredith Bennett-Smith

Michael Blaine

SOUND MIX
Jim Sullivan

TRANSCRIBERS
Consuelo Martinez-Reyes

Suzanne Pardee

Patti Pancoe

ARCHIVAL RESEARCHER

Sarena Snider

ARCHIVAL MATERIALS

ABCNews VideoSource
AP Images
Corbis
CNN ImageSource
Getty Images
MacNeil/Lehrer Productions


MUSIC
Audio Networks

Special thanks to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for initial funding of this project.

SPECIAL THANKS ALSO TO

Center for Investigative Reporting

For the Futuro Media Group:

Maria Hinojosa & Marty Spanninger, executive producers

Xochitl Dorsey, researcher

Denisse Moreno, intern

Nusha Balyan, production coordinator

Univision

Casa Rama

Lynne and Joe Horning

Our team at the Workshop included:

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING WORKSHOP/"LOST IN DETENTION"  

EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Charles Lewis

MANAGING EDITOR

Lynne Perri

SENIOR EDITORS

Wendell Cochran

Margaret Ebrahim

COMPUTER-ASSISTED REPORTING DIRECTOR
Jacob Fenton

REPORTING, VIDEO EDITING, PRODUCTION

Carolyn Brown

Larry Engel

RESEARCHERS

Monica Arpino

Tony Azios

Stokely Baksh

Lydia Beyoud

Rachel Boehm

Jack Weingart

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Lisa Hill

Melanie Taube

 

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Larry Kirkman, Dean, AU School of Communication