AI Summary
5 min readIn June 2025, a 24-year-old American trans man named Ezra Francis Hollett died of a heart attack inside the Haina Immigration Detention Center in the Dominican Republic. Hollett, who suffered from schizophrenia and needed an inhaler and an epipen, had been detained after squatting in a construction site. They were first placed in the male wing because they were male-presenting and had no ID, then moved to the female wing once officials identified them. Videos published by local media showed Hollett curled up on the floor in overcrowded rooms alongside dozens of others. A coroner's report attributed the death to a heart attack. The GoFundMe set up by their family described them as a compassionate person living with mental health issues and the aftereffects of childhood trauma.
Hollett's death is not an isolated tragedy. It is the direct result of an immigration system that systematically abuses Haitian migrants and has been shaped, from its very origins, by the United States military and border apparatus. This episode of It Could Happen Here traces that lineage, from the US occupation of the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century to the present day, showing how American border policy created the Dominican-Haitian border, trained the agencies that police it, and now sees those same tactics boomerang back onto US soil.
The US Created the Border
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Behind the Bastards
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Show Notes
All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.
- How the United States Shaped the Dominican Republic’s Immigration Enforcement Machine
- Settler Colonialism with Andrew
- Anti-ICE Protesters in Minnesota Charged with Conspiracy
- The Necessary War on Data Centers
- Executive Disorder: Iran Deal, UFC at the White House, Dialog Hack
You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today!
Sources/Links:
How the United States Shaped the Dominican Republic’s Immigration Enforcement Machine
Help Bring Ezra Home and Seek the Truth
(https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-bring-ezra-home-seek-the-truth)
More than a Massacre; Racial Violence and Citizenship in the Haitian-Dominican
Borderlands by Sabine Cadeu
Empire of Borders by Todd Miller
Border Patrol Nation by Todd Miller
From tierra de nadie to terre brulée – From Borderland to Border in Haiti and the Dominican Republic by Sabine Cadeu
(https://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/barriers/July2022_papers/SabineCadeauPaper.pdf)
Haitians, Magic, and Money: Raza and Society in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands, 1900 to 1937 by Lauren Derby (https://www.jstor.org/stable/179294)
Making the Dominican Republic Great Again? by Lorgia García-Peña
(https://nacla.org/making-dominican-republic-great-again/)
Marines in the Dominican Republic 1916-1924
US warns its ‘darker-skinned’ citizens of Dominican Republic’s migrant crackdown by Richard Luscombe
Latinobarómetro 2024 Resultados por sexo y edad Informe de estudio #LAT-2024 v1
(https://www.latinobarometro.org/latinobarometro-2024#LAT-2024-selected-country-header)
Ten Year
More from this podcast
Behind the Bastards →