New York (AFP)

It was eight years ago, well before Donald Trump: two young undocumented migrants were deliberately arrested by the American border police, in order to infiltrate a private detention center in Florida and observe "the domestic "US migration policy.

The result is a punchy documentary, "The Infiltrators", released on the US public channel PBS a few weeks before the US presidential election on November 3 in which Donald Trump, who made the hardening of migration a leitmotif , hopes to be re-elected.

"What freedom, what power, what dignity to grant to migrants from this country? This is one of the central questions of the film, and a central question of this election," US-Peruvian director Alex told AFP. Rivera, co-director of the film with his wife Cristina Ibarra, American of Mexican origin.

- "Ocean's Eleven of Immigration" -

"The issue of the rights of undocumented migrants has never been so hot," said Mr. Rivera, who describes his film as the story of a "heist", an "Ocean's 11 of immigration".

Former President Barack Obama had been dubbed "the chief expeller" because of the 3.2 million migrants expelled from the United States during his tenure between 2009 and 2016. This policy was "a big mistake" , now says Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who was his vice-president throughout this period.

Even the highest Trump administration eviction figures (some 337,000 evictions in 2018) remain below the Obama years (over 400,000 annually for the period 2012 to 2014), according to the Pew Research Institute.

Although he made the undocumented people one of his scapegoats, Mr. Trump did not fully keep his promise to complete a wall along the US-Mexico border, nor to deport three million undocumented migrants - he expelled less than half of them.

But the powers of the migration police were considerably strengthened under his mandate, and their methods - including dramatic scenes of separation of children from their parents, or arrests in courts, where migration agents were forbidden to go. before - have continued to fuel the controversy since 2017.

Alternating between documentary scenes and reenactments of what they experienced in the Broward, Florida detention center, "The Infiltrators" - on view until November 5 on the PBS site pov.org - tells the story of two members of the National Alliance of Young Migrants, a militant group of "Dreamers": these young children arrived in the United States who, although Americanized since having spent most of their life in the United States, remain on probation lack of a long-term residence permit.

"Since 2012, we have witnessed injustices against migrants. But now the conditions in the detention centers are much worse because of the pandemic", told AFP one of these "infiltrators", Marco Saavedra, 30 years old. , employed in a Mexican restaurant of his family in the Bronx, awaiting the treatment of his request for political asylum.

Another protagonist of the film, the Argentinian Claudio Rojas, whom the "infiltrators" managed to get out of the detention center: he was re-arrested after the film was presented at the Sundance festival in 2019, and expelled a week before the release documentary in Florida.

"It was horrible. It was like reliving the movie, but with us inside," says Cristina Ibarra.

- With ICE agents -

Another recent release: "Immigration Nation", a six-part series on Netflix, offers a rare insight into the functioning of the migration police.

American filmmakers Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz have obtained the unprecedented authorization to follow, for two and a half years, agents of ICE (the American immigration control body) in their operations against undocumented migrants.

They told the New York Times that ICE asked them to postpone the broadcast after the election, and cut out key scenes, such as when officers lie to enter the homes of undocumented migrants, or are ordered to 'also arrest "collateral" - undocumented migrants who are not subject to any arrest warrant.

But the broadcast could be maintained thanks to the precautions taken in the signed contract, during the pre-shoot, between ICE and the directors, they indicated.

These films are in addition to other documentaries on illegal immigration released in recent years, such as "Living Undocumented" (on Netflix) or "Torn Apart: Separated at the border" ("Torn apart at the border"). border ", on HBO).

© 2020 AFP