The List

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Prison employee Phil Little tours the prison yard at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary after a riot in 1987. The wall behind him has messages from Cuban detainees. Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Courtesy of Georgia State University Library hide caption

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Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Courtesy of Georgia State University Library

Prison employee Phil Little tours the prison yard at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary after a riot in 1987. The wall behind him has messages from Cuban detainees.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Courtesy of Georgia State University Library

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.

Additional context:

• Read Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, by William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh
• Check out for yourself the State Department's FOIA Virtual Reading Room.
• Watch the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights on the riots at Atlanta and Oakdale.

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