As the White House haggles with senators over changes to the immigration system, there’s a largely invisible immigration crisis playing out off the coast of Florida.

You may not think of the Coast Guard as an immigration agency, but off the shores of Florida, Coast Guard agents are intercepting and detaining thousands of migrants, including kids traveling alone. Most of them are Haitian. Since Haiti’s president was assassinated in the summer of 2021, the Coast Guard has detained more than 27,000 people seeking protection on American shores.

Their claims are processed aboard Coast Guard ships, far from public view.

Seth Freed Wessler investigated this system for ProPublica and speaks to host Scott Tong about what he found.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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