August 17, 2025 • 43 mins
Three months after Alligator Alcatraz is demolished, Tommy faces his ultimate choice: disappear into a quiet life or use his hard-won knowledge to transform the entire immigration system. Joining the Federal Immigration Legal Aid Coalition, Tommy brings his community-organizing model to detention centers nationwide, reuniting with Maria, Luis, and Elena to create the Community Resilience Network. As their peer-to-peer education program spreads to 200 facilities, average detention times plummet and family reunification rates soar.
Ten years later, Tommy has trained thousands of advocates who carry the Alligator Alcatraz lessons to fights for housing, healthcare, and criminal justice reform. In Beau's final reflection, we learn that the most powerful escape isn't fleeing broken systems—it's teaching others how to fix them, one community at a time, until entire forests of change grow from seeds planted in a swamp.
To become a premium subscriber (no ads and no feed drops) visit caloroga.com/plus. For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which seays UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. You also get 25+ other shows on the network ad-free! Go to Caloroga.com for all our shows!
Ten years later, Tommy has trained thousands of advocates who carry the Alligator Alcatraz lessons to fights for housing, healthcare, and criminal justice reform. In Beau's final reflection, we learn that the most powerful escape isn't fleeing broken systems—it's teaching others how to fix them, one community at a time, until entire forests of change grow from seeds planted in a swamp.
To become a premium subscriber (no ads and no feed drops) visit caloroga.com/plus. For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which seays UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. You also get 25+ other shows on the network ad-free! Go to Caloroga.com for all our shows!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calaruga Shark Media. Three months after Alligator Alcatraz was bulldozed
back into the swamp it never should have left. I
got a phone call from Tommy Esperanza. Now I hadn't
expected to hear from Tommy again. Last time I'd seen him.
(00:27):
He was walking away from the ruins of that detention
center with his freedom papers in his pocket, and the
whole world opened up in front of him. Man had
every right to disappear into a normal life, find a
quiet job somewhere, and pretend that those four weeks in
the Everglades had been nothing but a bad dream. But
that ain't the call I got. Bo Tommy said, I've
(00:51):
been thinking about what you said that last night, about
how the real escape is turning your prison into something
worth staying for. I remember, I said, well, I found
another prison that needs transforming. You see, Tommy had been
offered a job, not just any job, but a position
(01:15):
with a federal Immigration Legal Aid Coalition, a network of
lawyers and advocates who had been created in response to
the corruption scandal that Elena's evidence had exposed. They wanted
Tommy to be what they called a facility liaison specialist,
which was a fancy way of saying. They wanted him
to go into detention centers across the country and teach
(01:37):
people how to navigate the system, organize communities, and transform
impossible situations into opportunities for justice. It was exactly the
kind of work that most people would run from, voluntarily
returning to the world of immigration detention, working with bureaucrats
and administrators, dealing with the daily heartbreak of families or
(02:00):
apart by policies designed to break their spirits. But Tommy
saw it different than he saw it as a chance
to plant seeds. This is episode six Freedom Papers. The
(02:22):
first facility they sent Tommy to was a place called
Riverside Detention Center in South Texas, another hastily constructed facility
that was already falling apart six months after it opened.
According to the reports Tommy read on the drive down,
Riverside was everything Alligator Alcatraz had been, except bigger and
(02:45):
more efficient at separating families. Twelve hundred people housed in
buildings that were designed for eight hundred processing quotas that
required administrators to move people through the system faster than
anyone could track where they were going. The kind of
place where people disappeared into bureaucratic chaos, and families spent
months trying to find each other. Tommy arrived at Riverside
(03:10):
on a Monday morning with nothing but a Duffel bag,
an official letter of introduction, and four weeks of experience
turning disasters into communities. What he found was exactly what
he'd expected. Overcrowded housing units, administrative staff overwhelmed by paperwork
they didn't understand, and hundreds of people who'd given up
(03:34):
hope that anything could be done to improve their situation.
It was Alligator Alcatraz all over again, except without the alligators.
But Tommy also found something else, three people who'd been
transferred from Alligator Alcatraz before its closure and who'd been
quietly trying to recreate what they'd learned in the swamp.
(03:57):
Maria Santos was there with her son David, both of
them waiting for their asylum hearing while helping other families
navigate the family reunification process. Louis Morales was teaching people
about organizing food distribution and resolving conflicts between different cultural groups,
and Elena Vasquez was there too, working with the Legal
(04:20):
Aid Coalition to identify cases where detention orders might be
based on fraudulent documentation. Tommy's community hadn't been scattered by
the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. It had been dispersed to
spread what they'd learned to new places. The work at
(04:45):
Riverside was different from what Tommy had done in the
Everglades because this time he had official authorization and external support.
He wasn't operating underground. He was working with the facility
administration to identify proper and develop solutions, But the fundamental
approach was the same. Find the people who understand how
(05:07):
things actually work, helped them organize around practical problems, and
let the solutions grow from the community instead of being
imposed from outside. Within two weeks, Tommy had identified the
informal leaders in each housing unit, the people who were
already helping others navigate the bureaucracy, and the folks who
(05:30):
had skills and knowledge that could benefit everyone. Within a month,
he'd helped establish what the administration called resident advisory committees,
But what everyone understood were the governance structures for a
community that was learning to take care of itself. The
beautiful part was watching the facilities operations improve in ways
(05:54):
that the administrators couldn't explain and couldn't take credit for
Medical appointment that used to take weeks to schedule were
happening within days because the resident committees had organized peer
advocates who could help people navigate the health services bureaucracy.
Family reunification requests that used to disappear into paperwork purgatory
(06:17):
were being processed efficiently because Elena had trained people to
understand which forms to file and how to follow up
when the system didn't respond. Food service complaints dropped to
nearly zero because Maria had worked with the kitchen staff
to establish communication systems that allowed residents to provide feedback
(06:38):
and suggestions without going through official complaint procedures. And conflicts
between different cultural and language groups had virtually disappeared because
Luish had helped establish translation networks and conflict resolution procedures
that addressed problems before they became crises. The administration was
(06:59):
delight with these improvements, even though they had no idea
how they were happening. But the real test of Tommy's
approach came when Riverside faced its own crisis. Four months
after Tommy arrived, federal investigators announced that they were expanding
(07:20):
their immigration detention fraud investigation to include facilities in Texas.
Riverside was one of twelve detention centers that were going
to be audited for contractor fraud, financial irregularities, and operational violations.
The facilities administrators panicked. They'd been taking credit for the
(07:42):
operational improvements that Tommy's community organizing had created, but they
had no idea how to maintain those improvements if their
staffing and budgets were cut during the investigation. More importantly,
they were terrified that the investigation would reveal their own
way roles in the kinds of financial irregularities that had
(08:03):
brought down the administrators at Alligator Alcatraz. That's when Tommy
made a proposal that changed everything about how immigration detention
facilities operated. Instead of trying to hide problems or shift
blame to others, Tommy suggested that Riverside cooperate fully with
the investigation and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate
(08:25):
how detention facilities could be run efficiently, humanly, and transparently.
His idea was simple, turned the audit into a showcase
for community based detention management. The resident advisory committees that
Tommy had helped establish would work directly with federal investigators
(08:46):
to document how the facility actually operated, what problems existed,
and what solutions had been developed through community organizing. Instead
of treating detainees as potentials, security risks, or administrative burdens,
Riverside would demonstrate that people in detention could be partners
(09:07):
in creating safe, efficient, and humane living conditions. It was
a radical idea, using an investigation that was supposed to
expose corruption as an opportunity to model what immigration detention
could look like when it was designed around human dignity
(09:28):
instead of bureaucratic convenience. The results of Tommy's experiment exceeded
everyone's expectations, including his own. The federal audit of Riverside
became the first immigration detention investigation that actually resulted in
(09:51):
commendations instead of indictments. Investigators found that the facility was
operating under budget, with lower recidivince rates, fewer medical emergencies,
and higher rates of successful family reunification than any comparable
facility in the federal system. More importantly, they found that
(10:13):
these improvements had been achieved not through increased funding or
additional staffing, but through community organizing and resident participation in
facility management. The resident advisory committees had identified operational problems
that the administration had never noticed and developed solutions that
were more effective and less expensive than anything bureaucrats could
(10:36):
have designed. Elena's Legal aid work had reduced the average
length of detention by helping people understand their cases and
navigate the immigration court system more efficiently. Maria's Family Services
Coordination had reunited more families in six months than most
facilities managed in two years. And Luish's conflict reads solution
(11:00):
programs had created a community environment where people from dozens
of different countries and cultures were working together instead of
against each other. The audit report concluded that Riverside Detention
Center represented a breakthrough model for humane and efficient immigration
detention that should be replicated at facilities nationwide. Tommy's approach
(11:25):
to community organizing had been officially recognized as federal best
practices for immigration detention management, but the most important recognition
came from somewhere else Entirely. In six months after the
Riverside audit, Tommy received a letter that changed his understanding
(11:48):
of what he'd accomplished at Alligator Alcatraz. The letter was
from David Santos Maria's son, who was now eighteen years
old and attending college in Florida on a scholarship he'd
received through a program for asylum seekers. David wrote that
he'd been thinking about what he wanted to study, and
(12:10):
that his experience at Alligator Alcatraz had convinced him to
pursue a degree in public administration with a focus on
immigration policy. You taught me something that I'll never forget,
David wrote. You taught me that systems only seem permanent
until someone shows you how to change them. And you
(12:31):
taught me that the people who are affected by bad
policies are often the ones who understand best how to
fix them. David wasn't the only one who'd been inspired
to continue the work that had started in the swamp.
Luis had enrolled in a community college program in environmental
science with plans to work on sustainable development projects in
(12:51):
immigrant communities. Maria had been hired by a family reunification
organization to train other facilities in community baced family services coordination.
Elena had been appointed to a federal task force on
immigration detention reform, where she was using her insider knowledge
to redesign the policies that had once been used to
(13:13):
destroy families, and Old Pete, wonderful Old Pete who taught
everyone how to read the currents and navigate dangerous waters.
Pete had been hired by a legal aid organization to
train advocates in understanding bureaucratic systems and finding pressure points
where small changes could have big effects. The community that
(13:35):
had been built in four weeks at Alligator Alcatraz was
now spread across the entire immigration system, transforming it from
the inside through the simple principle that people deserve to
be treated with dignity and given opportunities to solve their
own problems. Two years after Alligator Alcatraz was demolished, Tommy
(14:08):
got a call that brought the whole story full circle.
The Department of Homeland Security wanted to hire him, not
as a detainee or a person being processed through the system,
but as a senior advisor on detention facility operations and
community engagement strategies. They offered him an office in Washington,
(14:29):
a six figure salary, and the opportunity to shape immigration
policy at the highest levels of the federal government. It
was everything that most people would consider success recognition, authority,
financial security, and the chance to influence the system that
had once tried to destroy him. Tommy turned it down. Why,
(14:55):
Elena asked when he told her about the offer they'd
been having dinner at a restaurant in San Antonio, where
Elena was now based as the regional coordinator for the
Federal Immigration Legal Aid Coalition, Because Tommy said, that's not
where the real work happens. Tommy explained that he'd learned
(15:17):
something important during his time at Riverside and the other
facilities where he'd been working. The changes that mattered most
weren't the ones that came from Washington policy directives or
administrative reforms. They were the changes that happened when people
in impossible situations learned that they didn't have to accept
impossibility as permanent. I can help one person at a
(15:40):
time learn how to navigate the system, Tommy said. Or
I can help communities learn how to change the system.
But I can't do both from an office in Washington,
Elena smiled. So what's next? Tommy had been thinking about
that question for months. His work with the Legal Aid
(16:02):
Coalition had taken him to detention facilities across the country,
and he'd seen the same patterns everywhere, overcrowded conditions, bureaucratic confusion,
and people who'd given up hope that anything could be improved.
But he'd also seen something else, the incredible capacity of
(16:22):
ordinary people to solve extraordinary problems when they were given
the opportunity in support to work together. Tommy's next project
was ambitious in its simplicity. He wanted to create a
training program that would teach community organizing and system navigation
skills to people in immigration detention across the country, not
(16:45):
as a government program or charitable service, but as a
peer to peer education network run by people who'd learned
through experience how to transform impossible situations into opportunities for justice.
(17:07):
The program Tommy created was called the Community Resilience Network,
and it was everything that bureaucrats fear most effective, inexpensive,
and impossible to control. The idea was elegant. People who
successfully navigated the immigration system would return to detention facilities
(17:29):
to teach others how to organize communities, advocate for their rights,
and work with legal aid organizations to resolve their cases efficiently.
Elena provided the legal expertise and policy knowledge. Maria coordinated
family services and cultural mediation training. Luis taught sustainable community
(17:50):
development and conflict resolution, and Old Pete, ever patient. Old
Pete taught people how to read systems and understand how
power or actually flows through bureaucratic organizations. But the heart
of the program was something that couldn't be taught in
workshops or written in manuals, the understanding that dignity is
(18:12):
not something that systems can grant or take away, but
something that people create for themselves through the way they
treat each other. Within a year, the Community Resilience Network
was operating in forty three detention facilities across twelve states.
Average detention times were dropping, family reunification rates were increasing,
(18:36):
and facility administrators were reporting improvements in safety, health, and
morale that they couldn't explain through their official programs. More importantly,
people who completed the network's training were carrying that knowledge
with them when they were released, creating a generation of
immigrant rights advocates who understood the system from the inside
(18:59):
and knew how to help others navigate it successfully. Tommy
had achieved something that no government program or policy reform
could accomplish. He'd turned the immigration detention system into a
training ground for immigration rights organizers. But the most important
measure of success wasn't statistics or policy changes. It was letters.
(19:29):
Tommy kept every letter he received from people who'd been
part of the community Resilience network, letters from parents who'd
been reunited with their children, from people who'd successfully navigated
the asylum process, from families who'd found stable housing and
employment after being released from detention. But the letters that
(19:49):
meant the most were the ones from people who'd gone
on to help others, Like the letter from Carlos Mendoza,
who'd been reunited with his family in Phoenix and was
now working with a church based organization to provide translation
services and legal aid referrals to newly arrived asylum seekers.
(20:09):
Or the letter from Miguel Restrepo, who'd learned from his
failed escape attempt at Alligator Alcatraz and was now teaching
water safety and survival skills to immigrants crossing dangerous border areas.
Or the letter from Antonio Silva, who'd become a paralegal
specializing in family reunification cases and had helped reconnect more
(20:31):
than two hundred families that had been separated by immigration
enforcement actions. Each letter was evidence of something that Tommy
had understood from his first day at Alligator Alcatraz. People
don't need to be saved by systems. They need systems
that give them opportunities to save themselves and each other.
(20:52):
The Community Resilience Network had proven that the most effective
immigration reform wasn't new legislation or increased funding. It was
teaching people how to work together to make existing systems
work better. But Tommy's greatest success was also his greatest challenge.
The network was working so well that it was threatening
(21:15):
the people who profited from dysfunction. Three years after Alligator
Alcatraz closed, Tommy faced the same choice he'd faced in
the swamp, whether to protect what he'd built or to
risk everything to make it bigger. The Community Resilience Network
had become too successful to ignore. Immigration officials were asking
(21:38):
questions about why certain facilities were performing so much better
than others. Contractors were complaining that their costs were increasing
because detainees were advocating for better conditions and more efficient services,
and politicians were starting to notice that detention facilities with
active community resilience programs were reus, uniting families faster and
(22:02):
processing cases more efficiently than facilities that relied on traditional
administrative approaches. Some of those politicians wanted to expand the
program and make it an official part of federal immigration policy.
Others wanted to shut it down before it spread further.
(22:22):
Tommy understood that accepting official recognition would mean accepting official control.
The Community Resilience Network worked because it was run by
and four the people it served, not because it followed
bureaucratic guidelines and administrative procedures. But he also understood that
(22:44):
without some kind of institutional protection, the network was vulnerable
to being dismantled by officials who preferred systems that were
easier to control, even if they were less effective at
helping people. Elena had a salt that was typically brilliant.
Instead of choosing between official recognition and grassroots independence, they
(23:08):
were going to create something that was both and neither.
A non profit organization that could receive federal funding and
operate in official partnerships with government agencies, but that was
governed by people who'd experienced immigration detention and was accountable
to the communities it served rather than to bureaucratic supervisors.
(23:31):
It was bureaucratic jiu jitsu on a national scale, using
the system's own desire for success stories to protect and
expand a program that was fundamentally changing how the system operated.
(23:51):
The Community Resilience Institute was officially launched, five years after
Tommy first walked through the gates of Alligator Alcatraz. The
ceremony was held at the University of Miami in a
conference room overlooking Biscayne Bay, about fifty miles from where
the detention center had once stood. Tommy, Elena, Maria Luis,
(24:14):
and Old Pete were all there, along with dozens of
people whose lives had been changed by the work that
had started in a swamp. Also, there were federal officials,
immigration judges, legal aid attorneys, and representatives from detention facilities
across the country who'd come to learn about the innovative
community engagement strategies that were being recognized as national best
(24:39):
practices for immigration detention management. It was exactly the kind
of official recognition that Tommy had once thought was impossible,
a government ceremony celebrating a program that had grown out
of resistance to government policies. But the most important people
at the ceremony weren't the officials, or the advocates or
(25:01):
the academics who'd come to study the Community Resilience model.
They were the families, parents and children who'd been reunited
through the network's family services programs, couples who'd found each
other after being separated by bureaucratic chaos, Communities that had
(25:22):
been built in detention facilities and had continued growing after
people were released. David Santos was there, now a graduate
student in public policy who was writing his thesis on
community based approaches to immigration integration. Carlos Mendoza was there
with his wife and daughters, all of them now US
(25:45):
citizens who were working with immigrant rights organizations in Arizona. Miguel,
Jose and Antonio were there, the three men who'd tried
to escape from Alligator Alcatraz and had learned instead how
to transform the system that had trapped them. And dozens
of others whose names weren't in any official reports, but
(26:06):
whose stories were the real measure of what had been accomplished,
People who'd learned that they didn't have to accept injustice
as permanent, and who'd taught others the same lesson. At
the end of the ceremony, Tommy was asked to give
a speech about the Community Resilience Institute and its plans
for the future. Tommy had never been comfortable with speeches,
(26:31):
but he'd learned over the years that sometimes the most
important things to say are the ones that make you
uncomfortable to say. Five years ago, Tommy said, I was
arrested during an immigration raid and sent to a detention
center that was built by people who thought that suffering
was an effective deterrent to immigration. What they didn't understand
(26:56):
is that suffering can also be a teacher. It can
teach you who you really are, what you're really capable of,
and what really matters when everything else is taken away.
At Alligator Alcatraz, I learned that systems only seem permanent
until you understand how they actually work. I learned that
(27:17):
the people who are most affected by broken policies are
often the ones who best understand how to fix them.
And I learned that the most powerful force for change
isn't authority or money or official recognition. It's people who
refuse to accept that cruelty is inevitable and who are
(27:37):
willing to work together to prove that something better is possible.
The Community Resilience Institute exists because of people who made
that choice, people who decided that their suffering wasn't going
to be wasted if they could use it to spare
others from the same suffering. Our work isn't finished. There
(27:58):
are still families being separated, still people disappearing into bureaucratic chaos,
still systems that treat human beings as problems to be managed,
rather than as people with dignity and rights and the
capacity to contribute to their own solutions. But what we've
proven is that those systems can be changed, not through
(28:19):
legislation or policy reforms or administrative directives, though those things
have their place, but through the simple recognition that people
deserve better and through the patient work of helping them
organize to demand better. The Community Resilience Institute isn't about
(28:40):
fixing immigration detention. It's about proving that people can fix
immigration detention when they're given the opportunity and support to
work together. And that's a lesson that applies to more
than just immigration policy. It applies to every system that
treats people as powerless when they're acting actually powerful, as
(29:01):
isolated when they're actually connected, as problems when they're actually solutions.
With the voice of a man whose witnessed transformation beyond
anything he thought possible. Tommy concluded his speech by reading
a letter he'd received that morning from a woman named
Rosa Martinez, who'd been processed through a detention facility in California,
(29:24):
where the Community Resilience Network had been operating for two years.
Rosa wrote that she'd been separated from her four year
old daughter during an immigration raid and had spent three
months not knowing where her child was or whether she'd
ever see her again. I was ready to give up,
Rosa's letters said. I was ready to sign any paper
(29:46):
they put in front of me, agreed to any arrangement
that would at least let me know that my daughter
was safe, even if it meant I would never see
her again. But the people in your program taught me
something different. They taught me that giving up wasn't the
only option. They taught me how to navigate the system,
how to advocate for my rights, how to find the
(30:08):
right lawyers and the right organizations, and the right pressure
points where a small amount of effort could make a
big difference. More importantly, they taught me that I wasn't alone.
That there were other parents who understood what I was
going through, and other families who'd been reunited after situations
(30:28):
that seemed hopeless. It took four months, but I found
my daughter, and when we were reunited, I made a
promise that I would spend the rest of my life
making sure that no other parent had to go through
what we went through. I'm now working with a legal
aid organization in Los Angeles helping other families navigate the
(30:51):
family reunification process. I use everything I learned from your program,
and I teach those skills to other people who are
facing the same challenges I faced. You didn't just help
me find my daughter. You helped me find my purpose.
You showed me that my suffering could become my strength,
(31:12):
and that my experience could become someone else's hope. That's
what the Community Resilience Institute really does. It doesn't just
solve problems, It creates problem solvers. It doesn't just reunite families,
It creates people who can help other families reunite themselves.
Thank you for teaching me that the most powerful escape
(31:35):
isn't running away from broken systems, it's learning how to
fix them. Tommy folded the letter and looked out at
the audience. Officials and advocates, academics, and activists, but most importantly,
people whose lives had been changed by the recognition that
(31:55):
they had the power to change other people's lives. That's
what we do, Tommy said, simply. We teach people how
to fix broken systems, and then we get out of
their way and let them do it. Ten years after
(32:18):
Alligator Alcatraz was demolished, I had coffee with Tommy at
a cafe in Miami, not far from where that impossible
detention center had once stood. Tommy was older, obviously, ten
years of working in immigration detention facilities will age a
man in ways that show, but he was also something
(32:39):
I hadn't expected. He was content, not satisfied. Tommy's the
kind of man who will never be satisfied as long
as there is injustice in the world, but content in
the way that comes from knowing that you've spent your
life on work that matters, with people who matter, for
reasons that matter. The Community Resilience Institute was operating in
(33:02):
two hundred facilities across the country. Average detention times had
dropped by forty percent at facilities with active programs, family
reunification rates had increased by sixty percent, and more than
ten thousand people had been trained in community organizing and
system navigation skills that they were using to help others
(33:24):
long after they'd been released from detention. But the numbers
weren't what made Tommy content. What made him content was
the stories. Stories like Rosa Martinez, who'd become a legal
aid coordinator helping other families navigate the immigration system. Stories
(33:44):
like David Santos, who'd earned his master's degree in public
administration and was now working with the Department of Justice
to reform immigration court procedures. Stories like Carlos Mendoza, whose
family had started a small business providing translation and legal
aid services to immigrant communities in Phoenix. Stories like the
(34:07):
three hundred people who'd been trained through the Community Resilience
Network and had gone on to establish similar programs in
their own communities, spreading the knowledge and the model far
beyond the immigration system, to housing advocacy, criminal justice reform,
health care access, and education equity. You know what the
(34:28):
real success is, Tommy asked, stirring sugar into his coffee
and looking out at the Miami skyline. What's that I'm
not needed anymore? What Tommy meant was that the Community
Resilience Institute had accomplished something that most organizations never achieve.
(34:49):
It had made itself obsolete. Not by solving all the
problems it was created to address. There were still families
being separated, still people trapped in in bureaucratic chaos, still
systems that treated human dignity as an inconvenience. But by
creating a generation of people who understood that those problems
(35:11):
could be solved, and who had the skills and knowledge
and connections to solve them without waiting for permission from
authorities or assistance from experts, the institute had become what
Tommy had always intended it to be. A training ground
that prepared people to go out and create their own
training grounds, a network that taught people how to build
(35:34):
their own networks, a model that showed people how to
develop their own models. The best kind of leadership, Tommy said,
is the kind that creates other leaders and the best
kind of program is the one that teaches people how
to create their own programs. Elena had gone on to
(35:55):
establish a similar institute focused on criminal justice reform, using
the same community organizing principles to help people navigate the
legal system and advocate for policy changes. Maria was running
a family services organization that had expanded beyond immigration to
work with families affected by housing displacement, health care access barriers,
(36:19):
and education inequality. LUISH had become an environmental justice organizer,
working with immigrant communities to address the health and safety
impacts of industrial pollution and climate change, and Old Pete
wonderful patient. Old Pete was teaching system navigation skills to
(36:41):
advocates working on everything from veterans benefits to disability rights
to elder care. The model that had been developed in
four weeks at Alligator Alcatraz was now being applied to
challenge injustice wherever it existed, by people who understood that
ordinary individuals working together could accomplish extraordinary things. As our
(37:06):
coffee grew cold and the Miami afternoon settled into evening,
Tommy told me about his plans for retirement. Retirement. I said,
you're fifty two years old, Tommy laughed. Not retirement from work,
retirement from being the person who has to coordinate everything.
(37:28):
I want to go back to being the person who
just fixes things that are broken. Tommy's plan was to
return to what he'd been doing before he was arrested
during that immigration raid ten years earlier maintenance work, except
this time, instead of maintaining buildings and equipment, he wanted
to maintain communities. His idea was to spend his time
(37:50):
traveling between different cities and towns, working with local organizations
to identify problems that could be solved through community organizing,
and then helping people develop the skills and structures they
needed to solve those problems themselves. Like a traveling handy man,
Tommy said, except instead of fixing leaky pipes and broken appliances,
(38:15):
I'd be helping people fix broken systems. It was a
perfect plan for Tommy, practical, unpretentious, focused on helping people
solve their own problems rather than solving problems for them,
and it was exactly the kind of work that bureaucrats
could never understand, fund or control, which made it exactly
(38:39):
the kind of work that was most likely to create
lasting change. So what's the lesson? I asked Tommy as
we prepared to leave the cafe. If you had to
sum up everything you learned from Alligator Alcatraz to now,
what would you tell people? Tommy thought about that moment,
(39:01):
watching the evening traffic flow past the window, I'd tell
them that every system was designed by people, which means
every system can be redesigned by people. And I'd tell
them that the people who are most affected by broken
systems are usually the ones who best understand how to
fix them. But mostly I'd tell them that they don't
(39:24):
have to wait for permission to start making things better.
They just have to be willing to work with other
people who want the same thing, and be patient enough
to let the changes grow from the ground up instead
of trying to impose them from the top down. Tommy paused,
then smiled, and I'd tell them that sometimes the most
(39:45):
important thing you can do is help other people discover
what they're capable of when they stop thinking of themselves
as powerless. With the satisfaction of a man who's told
a story that needed telling. That conversation with Tommy he
was five years ago. Since then, I've kept track of
the work he's been doing, not because he publicizes it,
(40:09):
but because the effects are visible in communities across the country,
where people have learned to organize themselves around solving problems
that seemed impossible. Tommy never did become famous, or powerful
or wealthy. He never wrote a book about his experiences
or gave speeches at conferences or appeared on television to
talk about his innovative approaches to social change. But he
(40:33):
did something more important. He proved that the most profound
transformations happened quietly through the patient work of ordinary people
who refuse to accept that suffering is inevitable. The detention
center they called Alligator Alcatraz existed for exactly four weeks.
(40:54):
In that time, it separated hundreds of families, wasted millions
of taxpayer dollars, and demonstrated every form of bureaucratic incompetence
known to government. But it also created something that outlasted
every building that was demolished, every contract that was canceled,
every career that was destroyed by the corruption investigation. It
(41:17):
created a community of people who understood that they didn't
have to be victims of systems that were designed to
victimize them. Tommy Esperanza arrived at Alligator Alcatraz as a
maintenance worker who had been swept up in an immigration rate.
He left as a teacher who'd learned how to help
other people maintain their dignity in situations designed to destroy it.
(41:41):
Elena Vasquez entered as a scapegoat for political corruption. She
left as an architect of justice who'd learned how to
turn systems against themselves, and hundreds of others discovered that
their suffering could become their strength, their experience could become
someone else's home, and their stories could become the foundation
(42:03):
for changes that reached far beyond anything they'd imagined possible.
They say, nobody ever escaped from Alcatraz, but Tommy Esperanza
and the people who worked with him accomplished something better
than escape. They prove that the most powerful prison walls
are the ones we build in our own minds, the
(42:26):
belief that systems can't be changed, that ordinary people can't
accomplish extraordinary things, that dignity and justice and human compassion
are luxuries that can't survive in a world designed around
efficiency and control. Breaking through those walls doesn't require tunnels
(42:47):
or ropes or midnight flights to freedom. It just requires
the recognition that every person has value, every community has wisdom,
and every system that denies those truths contains the seeds
of its own transformation. You just have to know how
to plant them, and sometimes, if you're very patient and
(43:10):
very lucky, you get to watch them grow into forests.
The sound of water moving through restored wetlands, carrying life
back to places where it belongs. That's the story of
Alligator Alcatraz, where wisdom beat authority, community beat bureaucracy, and
(43:30):
hope beat despair every single time,
Calaruga Shark Media. Three months after Alligator Alcatraz was bulldozed
back into the swamp it never should have left. I
got a phone call from Tommy Esperanza. Now I hadn't
expected to hear from Tommy again. Last time I'd seen him.
(00:27):
He was walking away from the ruins of that detention
center with his freedom papers in his pocket, and the
whole world opened up in front of him. Man had
every right to disappear into a normal life, find a
quiet job somewhere, and pretend that those four weeks in
the Everglades had been nothing but a bad dream. But
that ain't the call I got. Bo Tommy said, I've
(00:51):
been thinking about what you said that last night, about
how the real escape is turning your prison into something
worth staying for. I remember, I said, well, I found
another prison that needs transforming. You see, Tommy had been
offered a job, not just any job, but a position
(01:15):
with a federal Immigration Legal Aid Coalition, a network of
lawyers and advocates who had been created in response to
the corruption scandal that Elena's evidence had exposed. They wanted
Tommy to be what they called a facility liaison specialist,
which was a fancy way of saying. They wanted him
to go into detention centers across the country and teach
(01:37):
people how to navigate the system, organize communities, and transform
impossible situations into opportunities for justice. It was exactly the
kind of work that most people would run from, voluntarily
returning to the world of immigration detention, working with bureaucrats
and administrators, dealing with the daily heartbreak of families or
(02:00):
apart by policies designed to break their spirits. But Tommy
saw it different than he saw it as a chance
to plant seeds. This is episode six Freedom Papers. The
(02:22):
first facility they sent Tommy to was a place called
Riverside Detention Center in South Texas, another hastily constructed facility
that was already falling apart six months after it opened.
According to the reports Tommy read on the drive down,
Riverside was everything Alligator Alcatraz had been, except bigger and
(02:45):
more efficient at separating families. Twelve hundred people housed in
buildings that were designed for eight hundred processing quotas that
required administrators to move people through the system faster than
anyone could track where they were going. The kind of
place where people disappeared into bureaucratic chaos, and families spent
months trying to find each other. Tommy arrived at Riverside
(03:10):
on a Monday morning with nothing but a Duffel bag,
an official letter of introduction, and four weeks of experience
turning disasters into communities. What he found was exactly what
he'd expected. Overcrowded housing units, administrative staff overwhelmed by paperwork
they didn't understand, and hundreds of people who'd given up
(03:34):
hope that anything could be done to improve their situation.
It was Alligator Alcatraz all over again, except without the alligators.
But Tommy also found something else, three people who'd been
transferred from Alligator Alcatraz before its closure and who'd been
quietly trying to recreate what they'd learned in the swamp.
(03:57):
Maria Santos was there with her son David, both of
them waiting for their asylum hearing while helping other families
navigate the family reunification process. Louis Morales was teaching people
about organizing food distribution and resolving conflicts between different cultural groups,
and Elena Vasquez was there too, working with the Legal
(04:20):
Aid Coalition to identify cases where detention orders might be
based on fraudulent documentation. Tommy's community hadn't been scattered by
the closure of Alligator Alcatraz. It had been dispersed to
spread what they'd learned to new places. The work at
(04:45):
Riverside was different from what Tommy had done in the
Everglades because this time he had official authorization and external support.
He wasn't operating underground. He was working with the facility
administration to identify proper and develop solutions, But the fundamental
approach was the same. Find the people who understand how
(05:07):
things actually work, helped them organize around practical problems, and
let the solutions grow from the community instead of being
imposed from outside. Within two weeks, Tommy had identified the
informal leaders in each housing unit, the people who were
already helping others navigate the bureaucracy, and the folks who
(05:30):
had skills and knowledge that could benefit everyone. Within a month,
he'd helped establish what the administration called resident advisory committees,
But what everyone understood were the governance structures for a
community that was learning to take care of itself. The
beautiful part was watching the facilities operations improve in ways
(05:54):
that the administrators couldn't explain and couldn't take credit for
Medical appointment that used to take weeks to schedule were
happening within days because the resident committees had organized peer
advocates who could help people navigate the health services bureaucracy.
Family reunification requests that used to disappear into paperwork purgatory
(06:17):
were being processed efficiently because Elena had trained people to
understand which forms to file and how to follow up
when the system didn't respond. Food service complaints dropped to
nearly zero because Maria had worked with the kitchen staff
to establish communication systems that allowed residents to provide feedback
(06:38):
and suggestions without going through official complaint procedures. And conflicts
between different cultural and language groups had virtually disappeared because
Luish had helped establish translation networks and conflict resolution procedures
that addressed problems before they became crises. The administration was
(06:59):
delight with these improvements, even though they had no idea
how they were happening. But the real test of Tommy's
approach came when Riverside faced its own crisis. Four months
after Tommy arrived, federal investigators announced that they were expanding
(07:20):
their immigration detention fraud investigation to include facilities in Texas.
Riverside was one of twelve detention centers that were going
to be audited for contractor fraud, financial irregularities, and operational violations.
The facilities administrators panicked. They'd been taking credit for the
(07:42):
operational improvements that Tommy's community organizing had created, but they
had no idea how to maintain those improvements if their
staffing and budgets were cut during the investigation. More importantly,
they were terrified that the investigation would reveal their own
way roles in the kinds of financial irregularities that had
(08:03):
brought down the administrators at Alligator Alcatraz. That's when Tommy
made a proposal that changed everything about how immigration detention
facilities operated. Instead of trying to hide problems or shift
blame to others, Tommy suggested that Riverside cooperate fully with
the investigation and use it as an opportunity to demonstrate
(08:25):
how detention facilities could be run efficiently, humanly, and transparently.
His idea was simple, turned the audit into a showcase
for community based detention management. The resident advisory committees that
Tommy had helped establish would work directly with federal investigators
(08:46):
to document how the facility actually operated, what problems existed,
and what solutions had been developed through community organizing. Instead
of treating detainees as potentials, security risks, or administrative burdens,
Riverside would demonstrate that people in detention could be partners
(09:07):
in creating safe, efficient, and humane living conditions. It was
a radical idea, using an investigation that was supposed to
expose corruption as an opportunity to model what immigration detention
could look like when it was designed around human dignity
(09:28):
instead of bureaucratic convenience. The results of Tommy's experiment exceeded
everyone's expectations, including his own. The federal audit of Riverside
became the first immigration detention investigation that actually resulted in
(09:51):
commendations instead of indictments. Investigators found that the facility was
operating under budget, with lower recidivince rates, fewer medical emergencies,
and higher rates of successful family reunification than any comparable
facility in the federal system. More importantly, they found that
(10:13):
these improvements had been achieved not through increased funding or
additional staffing, but through community organizing and resident participation in
facility management. The resident advisory committees had identified operational problems
that the administration had never noticed and developed solutions that
were more effective and less expensive than anything bureaucrats could
(10:36):
have designed. Elena's Legal aid work had reduced the average
length of detention by helping people understand their cases and
navigate the immigration court system more efficiently. Maria's Family Services
Coordination had reunited more families in six months than most
facilities managed in two years. And Luish's conflict reads solution
(11:00):
programs had created a community environment where people from dozens
of different countries and cultures were working together instead of
against each other. The audit report concluded that Riverside Detention
Center represented a breakthrough model for humane and efficient immigration
detention that should be replicated at facilities nationwide. Tommy's approach
(11:25):
to community organizing had been officially recognized as federal best
practices for immigration detention management, but the most important recognition
came from somewhere else Entirely. In six months after the
Riverside audit, Tommy received a letter that changed his understanding
(11:48):
of what he'd accomplished at Alligator Alcatraz. The letter was
from David Santos Maria's son, who was now eighteen years
old and attending college in Florida on a scholarship he'd
received through a program for asylum seekers. David wrote that
he'd been thinking about what he wanted to study, and
(12:10):
that his experience at Alligator Alcatraz had convinced him to
pursue a degree in public administration with a focus on
immigration policy. You taught me something that I'll never forget,
David wrote. You taught me that systems only seem permanent
until someone shows you how to change them. And you
(12:31):
taught me that the people who are affected by bad
policies are often the ones who understand best how to
fix them. David wasn't the only one who'd been inspired
to continue the work that had started in the swamp.
Luis had enrolled in a community college program in environmental
science with plans to work on sustainable development projects in
(12:51):
immigrant communities. Maria had been hired by a family reunification
organization to train other facilities in community baced family services coordination.
Elena had been appointed to a federal task force on
immigration detention reform, where she was using her insider knowledge
to redesign the policies that had once been used to
(13:13):
destroy families, and Old Pete, wonderful Old Pete who taught
everyone how to read the currents and navigate dangerous waters.
Pete had been hired by a legal aid organization to
train advocates in understanding bureaucratic systems and finding pressure points
where small changes could have big effects. The community that
(13:35):
had been built in four weeks at Alligator Alcatraz was
now spread across the entire immigration system, transforming it from
the inside through the simple principle that people deserve to
be treated with dignity and given opportunities to solve their
own problems. Two years after Alligator Alcatraz was demolished, Tommy
(14:08):
got a call that brought the whole story full circle.
The Department of Homeland Security wanted to hire him, not
as a detainee or a person being processed through the system,
but as a senior advisor on detention facility operations and
community engagement strategies. They offered him an office in Washington,
(14:29):
a six figure salary, and the opportunity to shape immigration
policy at the highest levels of the federal government. It
was everything that most people would consider success recognition, authority,
financial security, and the chance to influence the system that
had once tried to destroy him. Tommy turned it down. Why,
(14:55):
Elena asked when he told her about the offer they'd
been having dinner at a restaurant in San Antonio, where
Elena was now based as the regional coordinator for the
Federal Immigration Legal Aid Coalition, Because Tommy said, that's not
where the real work happens. Tommy explained that he'd learned
(15:17):
something important during his time at Riverside and the other
facilities where he'd been working. The changes that mattered most
weren't the ones that came from Washington policy directives or
administrative reforms. They were the changes that happened when people
in impossible situations learned that they didn't have to accept
impossibility as permanent. I can help one person at a
(15:40):
time learn how to navigate the system, Tommy said. Or
I can help communities learn how to change the system.
But I can't do both from an office in Washington,
Elena smiled. So what's next? Tommy had been thinking about
that question for months. His work with the Legal Aid
(16:02):
Coalition had taken him to detention facilities across the country,
and he'd seen the same patterns everywhere, overcrowded conditions, bureaucratic confusion,
and people who'd given up hope that anything could be improved.
But he'd also seen something else, the incredible capacity of
(16:22):
ordinary people to solve extraordinary problems when they were given
the opportunity in support to work together. Tommy's next project
was ambitious in its simplicity. He wanted to create a
training program that would teach community organizing and system navigation
skills to people in immigration detention across the country, not
(16:45):
as a government program or charitable service, but as a
peer to peer education network run by people who'd learned
through experience how to transform impossible situations into opportunities for justice.
(17:07):
The program Tommy created was called the Community Resilience Network,
and it was everything that bureaucrats fear most effective, inexpensive,
and impossible to control. The idea was elegant. People who
successfully navigated the immigration system would return to detention facilities
(17:29):
to teach others how to organize communities, advocate for their rights,
and work with legal aid organizations to resolve their cases efficiently.
Elena provided the legal expertise and policy knowledge. Maria coordinated
family services and cultural mediation training. Luis taught sustainable community
(17:50):
development and conflict resolution, and Old Pete, ever patient. Old
Pete taught people how to read systems and understand how
power or actually flows through bureaucratic organizations. But the heart
of the program was something that couldn't be taught in
workshops or written in manuals, the understanding that dignity is
(18:12):
not something that systems can grant or take away, but
something that people create for themselves through the way they
treat each other. Within a year, the Community Resilience Network
was operating in forty three detention facilities across twelve states.
Average detention times were dropping, family reunification rates were increasing,
(18:36):
and facility administrators were reporting improvements in safety, health, and
morale that they couldn't explain through their official programs. More importantly,
people who completed the network's training were carrying that knowledge
with them when they were released, creating a generation of
immigrant rights advocates who understood the system from the inside
(18:59):
and knew how to help others navigate it successfully. Tommy
had achieved something that no government program or policy reform
could accomplish. He'd turned the immigration detention system into a
training ground for immigration rights organizers. But the most important
measure of success wasn't statistics or policy changes. It was letters.
(19:29):
Tommy kept every letter he received from people who'd been
part of the community Resilience network, letters from parents who'd
been reunited with their children, from people who'd successfully navigated
the asylum process, from families who'd found stable housing and
employment after being released from detention. But the letters that
(19:49):
meant the most were the ones from people who'd gone
on to help others, Like the letter from Carlos Mendoza,
who'd been reunited with his family in Phoenix and was
now working with a church based organization to provide translation
services and legal aid referrals to newly arrived asylum seekers.
(20:09):
Or the letter from Miguel Restrepo, who'd learned from his
failed escape attempt at Alligator Alcatraz and was now teaching
water safety and survival skills to immigrants crossing dangerous border areas.
Or the letter from Antonio Silva, who'd become a paralegal
specializing in family reunification cases and had helped reconnect more
(20:31):
than two hundred families that had been separated by immigration
enforcement actions. Each letter was evidence of something that Tommy
had understood from his first day at Alligator Alcatraz. People
don't need to be saved by systems. They need systems
that give them opportunities to save themselves and each other.
(20:52):
The Community Resilience Network had proven that the most effective
immigration reform wasn't new legislation or increased funding. It was
teaching people how to work together to make existing systems
work better. But Tommy's greatest success was also his greatest challenge.
The network was working so well that it was threatening
(21:15):
the people who profited from dysfunction. Three years after Alligator
Alcatraz closed, Tommy faced the same choice he'd faced in
the swamp, whether to protect what he'd built or to
risk everything to make it bigger. The Community Resilience Network
had become too successful to ignore. Immigration officials were asking
(21:38):
questions about why certain facilities were performing so much better
than others. Contractors were complaining that their costs were increasing
because detainees were advocating for better conditions and more efficient services,
and politicians were starting to notice that detention facilities with
active community resilience programs were reus, uniting families faster and
(22:02):
processing cases more efficiently than facilities that relied on traditional
administrative approaches. Some of those politicians wanted to expand the
program and make it an official part of federal immigration policy.
Others wanted to shut it down before it spread further.
(22:22):
Tommy understood that accepting official recognition would mean accepting official control.
The Community Resilience Network worked because it was run by
and four the people it served, not because it followed
bureaucratic guidelines and administrative procedures. But he also understood that
(22:44):
without some kind of institutional protection, the network was vulnerable
to being dismantled by officials who preferred systems that were
easier to control, even if they were less effective at
helping people. Elena had a salt that was typically brilliant.
Instead of choosing between official recognition and grassroots independence, they
(23:08):
were going to create something that was both and neither.
A non profit organization that could receive federal funding and
operate in official partnerships with government agencies, but that was
governed by people who'd experienced immigration detention and was accountable
to the communities it served rather than to bureaucratic supervisors.
(23:31):
It was bureaucratic jiu jitsu on a national scale, using
the system's own desire for success stories to protect and
expand a program that was fundamentally changing how the system operated.
(23:51):
The Community Resilience Institute was officially launched, five years after
Tommy first walked through the gates of Alligator Alcatraz. The
ceremony was held at the University of Miami in a
conference room overlooking Biscayne Bay, about fifty miles from where
the detention center had once stood. Tommy, Elena, Maria Luis,
(24:14):
and Old Pete were all there, along with dozens of
people whose lives had been changed by the work that
had started in a swamp. Also, there were federal officials,
immigration judges, legal aid attorneys, and representatives from detention facilities
across the country who'd come to learn about the innovative
community engagement strategies that were being recognized as national best
(24:39):
practices for immigration detention management. It was exactly the kind
of official recognition that Tommy had once thought was impossible,
a government ceremony celebrating a program that had grown out
of resistance to government policies. But the most important people
at the ceremony weren't the officials, or the advocates or
(25:01):
the academics who'd come to study the Community Resilience model.
They were the families, parents and children who'd been reunited
through the network's family services programs, couples who'd found each
other after being separated by bureaucratic chaos, Communities that had
(25:22):
been built in detention facilities and had continued growing after
people were released. David Santos was there, now a graduate
student in public policy who was writing his thesis on
community based approaches to immigration integration. Carlos Mendoza was there
with his wife and daughters, all of them now US
(25:45):
citizens who were working with immigrant rights organizations in Arizona. Miguel,
Jose and Antonio were there, the three men who'd tried
to escape from Alligator Alcatraz and had learned instead how
to transform the system that had trapped them. And dozens
of others whose names weren't in any official reports, but
(26:06):
whose stories were the real measure of what had been accomplished,
People who'd learned that they didn't have to accept injustice
as permanent, and who'd taught others the same lesson. At
the end of the ceremony, Tommy was asked to give
a speech about the Community Resilience Institute and its plans
for the future. Tommy had never been comfortable with speeches,
(26:31):
but he'd learned over the years that sometimes the most
important things to say are the ones that make you
uncomfortable to say. Five years ago, Tommy said, I was
arrested during an immigration raid and sent to a detention
center that was built by people who thought that suffering
was an effective deterrent to immigration. What they didn't understand
(26:56):
is that suffering can also be a teacher. It can
teach you who you really are, what you're really capable of,
and what really matters when everything else is taken away.
At Alligator Alcatraz, I learned that systems only seem permanent
until you understand how they actually work. I learned that
(27:17):
the people who are most affected by broken policies are
often the ones who best understand how to fix them.
And I learned that the most powerful force for change
isn't authority or money or official recognition. It's people who
refuse to accept that cruelty is inevitable and who are
(27:37):
willing to work together to prove that something better is possible.
The Community Resilience Institute exists because of people who made
that choice, people who decided that their suffering wasn't going
to be wasted if they could use it to spare
others from the same suffering. Our work isn't finished. There
(27:58):
are still families being separated, still people disappearing into bureaucratic chaos,
still systems that treat human beings as problems to be managed,
rather than as people with dignity and rights and the
capacity to contribute to their own solutions. But what we've
proven is that those systems can be changed, not through
(28:19):
legislation or policy reforms or administrative directives, though those things
have their place, but through the simple recognition that people
deserve better and through the patient work of helping them
organize to demand better. The Community Resilience Institute isn't about
(28:40):
fixing immigration detention. It's about proving that people can fix
immigration detention when they're given the opportunity and support to
work together. And that's a lesson that applies to more
than just immigration policy. It applies to every system that
treats people as powerless when they're acting actually powerful, as
(29:01):
isolated when they're actually connected, as problems when they're actually solutions.
With the voice of a man whose witnessed transformation beyond
anything he thought possible. Tommy concluded his speech by reading
a letter he'd received that morning from a woman named
Rosa Martinez, who'd been processed through a detention facility in California,
(29:24):
where the Community Resilience Network had been operating for two years.
Rosa wrote that she'd been separated from her four year
old daughter during an immigration raid and had spent three
months not knowing where her child was or whether she'd
ever see her again. I was ready to give up,
Rosa's letters said. I was ready to sign any paper
(29:46):
they put in front of me, agreed to any arrangement
that would at least let me know that my daughter
was safe, even if it meant I would never see
her again. But the people in your program taught me
something different. They taught me that giving up wasn't the
only option. They taught me how to navigate the system,
how to advocate for my rights, how to find the
(30:08):
right lawyers and the right organizations, and the right pressure
points where a small amount of effort could make a
big difference. More importantly, they taught me that I wasn't alone.
That there were other parents who understood what I was
going through, and other families who'd been reunited after situations
(30:28):
that seemed hopeless. It took four months, but I found
my daughter, and when we were reunited, I made a
promise that I would spend the rest of my life
making sure that no other parent had to go through
what we went through. I'm now working with a legal
aid organization in Los Angeles helping other families navigate the
(30:51):
family reunification process. I use everything I learned from your program,
and I teach those skills to other people who are
facing the same challenges I faced. You didn't just help
me find my daughter. You helped me find my purpose.
You showed me that my suffering could become my strength,
(31:12):
and that my experience could become someone else's hope. That's
what the Community Resilience Institute really does. It doesn't just
solve problems, It creates problem solvers. It doesn't just reunite families,
It creates people who can help other families reunite themselves.
Thank you for teaching me that the most powerful escape
(31:35):
isn't running away from broken systems, it's learning how to
fix them. Tommy folded the letter and looked out at
the audience. Officials and advocates, academics, and activists, but most importantly,
people whose lives had been changed by the recognition that
(31:55):
they had the power to change other people's lives. That's
what we do, Tommy said, simply. We teach people how
to fix broken systems, and then we get out of
their way and let them do it. Ten years after
(32:18):
Alligator Alcatraz was demolished, I had coffee with Tommy at
a cafe in Miami, not far from where that impossible
detention center had once stood. Tommy was older, obviously, ten
years of working in immigration detention facilities will age a
man in ways that show, but he was also something
(32:39):
I hadn't expected. He was content, not satisfied. Tommy's the
kind of man who will never be satisfied as long
as there is injustice in the world, but content in
the way that comes from knowing that you've spent your
life on work that matters, with people who matter, for
reasons that matter. The Community Resilience Institute was operating in
(33:02):
two hundred facilities across the country. Average detention times had
dropped by forty percent at facilities with active programs, family
reunification rates had increased by sixty percent, and more than
ten thousand people had been trained in community organizing and
system navigation skills that they were using to help others
(33:24):
long after they'd been released from detention. But the numbers
weren't what made Tommy content. What made him content was
the stories. Stories like Rosa Martinez, who'd become a legal
aid coordinator helping other families navigate the immigration system. Stories
(33:44):
like David Santos, who'd earned his master's degree in public
administration and was now working with the Department of Justice
to reform immigration court procedures. Stories like Carlos Mendoza, whose
family had started a small business providing translation and legal
aid services to immigrant communities in Phoenix. Stories like the
(34:07):
three hundred people who'd been trained through the Community Resilience
Network and had gone on to establish similar programs in
their own communities, spreading the knowledge and the model far
beyond the immigration system, to housing advocacy, criminal justice reform,
health care access, and education equity. You know what the
(34:28):
real success is, Tommy asked, stirring sugar into his coffee
and looking out at the Miami skyline. What's that I'm
not needed anymore? What Tommy meant was that the Community
Resilience Institute had accomplished something that most organizations never achieve.
(34:49):
It had made itself obsolete. Not by solving all the
problems it was created to address. There were still families
being separated, still people trapped in in bureaucratic chaos, still
systems that treated human dignity as an inconvenience. But by
creating a generation of people who understood that those problems
(35:11):
could be solved, and who had the skills and knowledge
and connections to solve them without waiting for permission from
authorities or assistance from experts, the institute had become what
Tommy had always intended it to be. A training ground
that prepared people to go out and create their own
training grounds, a network that taught people how to build
(35:34):
their own networks, a model that showed people how to
develop their own models. The best kind of leadership, Tommy said,
is the kind that creates other leaders and the best
kind of program is the one that teaches people how
to create their own programs. Elena had gone on to
(35:55):
establish a similar institute focused on criminal justice reform, using
the same community organizing principles to help people navigate the
legal system and advocate for policy changes. Maria was running
a family services organization that had expanded beyond immigration to
work with families affected by housing displacement, health care access barriers,
(36:19):
and education inequality. LUISH had become an environmental justice organizer,
working with immigrant communities to address the health and safety
impacts of industrial pollution and climate change, and Old Pete
wonderful patient. Old Pete was teaching system navigation skills to
(36:41):
advocates working on everything from veterans benefits to disability rights
to elder care. The model that had been developed in
four weeks at Alligator Alcatraz was now being applied to
challenge injustice wherever it existed, by people who understood that
ordinary individuals working together could accomplish extraordinary things. As our
(37:06):
coffee grew cold and the Miami afternoon settled into evening,
Tommy told me about his plans for retirement. Retirement. I said,
you're fifty two years old, Tommy laughed. Not retirement from work,
retirement from being the person who has to coordinate everything.
(37:28):
I want to go back to being the person who
just fixes things that are broken. Tommy's plan was to
return to what he'd been doing before he was arrested
during that immigration raid ten years earlier maintenance work, except
this time, instead of maintaining buildings and equipment, he wanted
to maintain communities. His idea was to spend his time
(37:50):
traveling between different cities and towns, working with local organizations
to identify problems that could be solved through community organizing,
and then helping people develop the skills and structures they
needed to solve those problems themselves. Like a traveling handy man,
Tommy said, except instead of fixing leaky pipes and broken appliances,
(38:15):
I'd be helping people fix broken systems. It was a
perfect plan for Tommy, practical, unpretentious, focused on helping people
solve their own problems rather than solving problems for them,
and it was exactly the kind of work that bureaucrats
could never understand, fund or control, which made it exactly
(38:39):
the kind of work that was most likely to create
lasting change. So what's the lesson? I asked Tommy as
we prepared to leave the cafe. If you had to
sum up everything you learned from Alligator Alcatraz to now,
what would you tell people? Tommy thought about that moment,
(39:01):
watching the evening traffic flow past the window, I'd tell
them that every system was designed by people, which means
every system can be redesigned by people. And I'd tell
them that the people who are most affected by broken
systems are usually the ones who best understand how to
fix them. But mostly I'd tell them that they don't
(39:24):
have to wait for permission to start making things better.
They just have to be willing to work with other
people who want the same thing, and be patient enough
to let the changes grow from the ground up instead
of trying to impose them from the top down. Tommy paused,
then smiled, and I'd tell them that sometimes the most
(39:45):
important thing you can do is help other people discover
what they're capable of when they stop thinking of themselves
as powerless. With the satisfaction of a man who's told
a story that needed telling. That conversation with Tommy he
was five years ago. Since then, I've kept track of
the work he's been doing, not because he publicizes it,
(40:09):
but because the effects are visible in communities across the country,
where people have learned to organize themselves around solving problems
that seemed impossible. Tommy never did become famous, or powerful
or wealthy. He never wrote a book about his experiences
or gave speeches at conferences or appeared on television to
talk about his innovative approaches to social change. But he
(40:33):
did something more important. He proved that the most profound
transformations happened quietly through the patient work of ordinary people
who refuse to accept that suffering is inevitable. The detention
center they called Alligator Alcatraz existed for exactly four weeks.
(40:54):
In that time, it separated hundreds of families, wasted millions
of taxpayer dollars, and demonstrated every form of bureaucratic incompetence
known to government. But it also created something that outlasted
every building that was demolished, every contract that was canceled,
every career that was destroyed by the corruption investigation. It
(41:17):
created a community of people who understood that they didn't
have to be victims of systems that were designed to
victimize them. Tommy Esperanza arrived at Alligator Alcatraz as a
maintenance worker who had been swept up in an immigration rate.
He left as a teacher who'd learned how to help
other people maintain their dignity in situations designed to destroy it.
(41:41):
Elena Vasquez entered as a scapegoat for political corruption. She
left as an architect of justice who'd learned how to
turn systems against themselves, and hundreds of others discovered that
their suffering could become their strength, their experience could become
someone else's home, and their stories could become the foundation
(42:03):
for changes that reached far beyond anything they'd imagined possible.
They say, nobody ever escaped from Alcatraz, but Tommy Esperanza
and the people who worked with him accomplished something better
than escape. They prove that the most powerful prison walls
are the ones we build in our own minds, the
(42:26):
belief that systems can't be changed, that ordinary people can't
accomplish extraordinary things, that dignity and justice and human compassion
are luxuries that can't survive in a world designed around
efficiency and control. Breaking through those walls doesn't require tunnels
(42:47):
or ropes or midnight flights to freedom. It just requires
the recognition that every person has value, every community has wisdom,
and every system that denies those truths contains the seeds
of its own transformation. You just have to know how
to plant them, and sometimes, if you're very patient and
(43:10):
very lucky, you get to watch them grow into forests.
The sound of water moving through restored wetlands, carrying life
back to places where it belongs. That's the story of
Alligator Alcatraz, where wisdom beat authority, community beat bureaucracy, and
(43:30):
hope beat despair every single time,
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