Its prisoners have included a political refugee from Venezuela, a victim of domestic abuse from the Congo and Rojas himself, who leaked secrets about the inner-workings of the corrupt establishment with the aid of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA). The majority of the events onscreen are ominously perched in the months leading up to the election of Trump, a president whose favoring of a border wall is as guaranteed as his unwillingness to provide executive orders for those seeking asylum in the United States.
Watching Ibarra and Rivera’s film during this period of pandemic is especially harrowing, since it was just reported this week by NPR that of the very few immigrants detained by ICE who have been tested for COVID-19, half of them have received a positive diagnosis. It is already unconscionable that a nation comprised of immigrants would warehouse those who are undocumented in a system that refuses to recognize their allegedly unalienable rights, and to keep them confined there at the increasingly palpable risk to their survival is a crime. The monolithic U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, which we’re told is twice the size of the FBI, is the Goliath to the NIYA’s David, and to penetrate the walls of its holding centers requires a good deal of ingenuity.
In some ways, “The Infiltrators” is reminiscent of 2018’s under-seen gem “American Animals” in how it blurs the line between narrative and documentary while incorporating genre tropes into the nonfiction medium. Rather than follow the formula of a heist flick, the film occasionally takes the form of a prison break thriller, as young Dreamers from the NIYA led by Marco Saavedra get themselves intentionally detained so that they can work from the inside, connecting with fellow immigrants while pressuring the system into freeing the wrongfully incarcerated one by one. A series of chillingly claustrophobic overhead shots view Broward’s inhabitants wandering about their outdoor cage in orange jumpsuits, so close to the surrounding world and yet stamped down into the earth.
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