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Mar 9, 2023 • 48min

White Lies: The List

Since we began reporting this story, we've been after a list. A secret list. On it are the names of 2,746 people whom the US government deemed excludable, including the men on the roof. The government has kept this list so secret that at one point it went so far as to classify it. None of the Mariel detainees knew if their name was on the list or not. In fact, nobody knew what names were on the list. Until now. In Episode 7, the story of a list that sparked uprisings, separated families, and changed the trajectory of U.S. immigration policy. And the story of what we learned when we finally got our hands on it. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Mar 2, 2023 • 41min

White Lies: The Trial

In Episode 6, we sneak into the graveyard of the Atlanta federal penitentiary with a radical peace activist to learn more about what happened in the prison in late 1984. A peaceful protest by detainees held in the Atlanta pen resulted in a violent crackdown, and one of the detainees, a man named Jose Hernandez-Mesa, was charged in federal court with inciting a riot. We tell the story of his trial — and the surprising verdict that began reshaping public opinion about the Mariel Cubans who were being detained. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Feb 23, 2023 • 43min

White Lies: The Pen

On May 18, 1980, a man named Genaro Soroa-Gonzalez arrived in Key West from the port of Mariel. With no family waiting to sponsor him, he was sent by plane to a resettlement camp at an army base. There he was interviewed by the INS and, a few days later, he boarded another plane, this one bound for the federal prison in Atlanta. But wait - he'd committed no crime, so why was the US government detaining him? And how long could they hold him? In Episode 5, the story of Genaro Soroa-Gonzalez and the beginning of the indefinite detention of Mariel Cubans. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Feb 16, 2023 • 55min

White Lies: The Entry Fiction

When President Carter promised to welcome the men and women arriving on the Mariel boatlift with "an open heart and open arms," he had referred to them as refugees. But technically speaking, they weren't refugees. They were classified as entrants, an immigration status with a peculiar legal standing in the United States. While entrants are physically allowed to enter the country, legally they're still at the border, asking to come in. Their presence in the country is known as a legal fiction — specifically, the "entry fiction." So even as Cubans were disembarking boats in droves through the summer of 1980, they were officially still floating off the coast of Key West. And this immigration status followed them to where they went next: an army base in rural Arkansas. In episode 4, the curious case of the militarized border in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Feb 9, 2023 • 51min

White Lies: The Rumors

During our reporting, we heard one story over and over again: that Fidel Castro had emptied his prisons to fill the boatlift. It's a story that's been told so often and with such conviction that of course it must be true, right? But what if this was more theater than history? What was happening in 1980 in Miami and throughout the country that made this story so compelling? Why did it feel so true to so many people? In Episode 3, we go to Miami to find out. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Feb 2, 2023 • 50min

White Lies: The Boatlift

Note: Due to a technical error, some listeners did not hear the correct audio for Episode 2. We are re-publishing it with the corrected audio. The story of the men on the roof didn't start with that prison takeover in 1991. It didn't start when they were detained in federal prisons. And it didn't start when the government made a secret list of their names in 1984. Instead, it started in the spring of 1980, with one of the largest refugee crises in American history: the Mariel Boatlift. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Jan 26, 2023 • 46min

White Lies: The Men on the Roof

It all started with a photograph. A photograph from 1991 of a prison takeover in rural Alabama. A photograph of a group of men on the roof of that prison holding a bedsheet scrawled with a message: "Pray for us." In the first episode of the new season of White Lies, hosts Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace go searching for answers to the questions raised by this photograph. Who were these men? What on earth had made them want to take over that prison? And what became of them after? As they search, they uncover a sprawling story: a mass exodus across the sea, a secret list, and the betrayal at the heart of this country's ideals. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Jan 23, 2023 • 3min

White Lies: Season 2 Trailer

In 1991, a group of men took over a federal prison in rural Alabama. But these men weren't prisoners, they were immigration detainees, all of them from Cuba. And none of them were serving time for a sentence; they were being indefinitely detained. Who were these men? What in the world had brought them from Cuba to a prison in rural Alabama, and what became of them afterward? On the new season of White Lies, hosts Chip Brantley and Andrew Beck Grace set out to find the men who took over the prison and, in the process, unspool a sprawling story of a mass exodus across the sea, back-channel cold war communiques, family separation, and a secret list.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Dec 20, 2022 • 14min

The Last Cup: Postscript

The 2022 World Cup has ended. With his left foot, Messi wrote a more spectacular finale than we could have imagined. In the final installment of The Last Cup, Jasmine Garsd reveals the magic of Argentina's first World Cup victory since 1986. This final episode of our series is mainly in English, with some Spanish. Este último capítulo está disponible en ingles, e incluye comentario en español.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Dec 8, 2022 • 25min

The Last Cup: Bonus Episode

Argentina has made it to the quarter finals of the 2022 World Cup, but the road has been a winding one. In our bonus episode, we take a moment to reflect on the scores and stumbles of the qualifying rounds, and speculate on what's to come for our hero, Lionel Messi. Host Jasmine Garsd discusses Argentina's anxiety with producer Julieta Martinelli and sports reporter Fidel Martinez. The Latinx Files is a weekly newsletter written by Fidel Martinez about the American Latinx experience. Julieta Martinelli is a Senior Producer at Futuro Media, where she also produced the Pultizer Prize-winning podcast Suave.The Last Cup is a dual language limited series from NPR and Futuro Studios. Listen to the Spanish versions here.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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