Filmmaker addresses response to Netflix’s ‘Immigration Nation’

Growing up in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, gave Christina Clusiau a fairly isolated view of the world. The filmmaker is now making up for lost opportunities.

Netflix’s “Immigration Nation” explores the current state of American immigration, a mission that sent Clusiau and her co-director, Shaul Schwarz, scrambling to locations across the hemisphere, including El Paso, Texas; Panama City, Florida; and Guatemala.

“Coming from a place without a lot of diversity made me curious about understanding and diving into worlds I didn’t know much about,” Clusiau said by phone from her home in New York.

What separates their six-part series from other documentaries on the same subject is how it tackles the hot-button issue from various perspectives, notably ones from employees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Since the project debuted last month, much has been made of scenes in which certain agents round up people living in the U.S. illegally with the glee of cowboys roping up stray cattle. But the directors also spotlight agents who show compassion for those being arrested.

The team’s requests to be embedded with ICE date back to the Obama administration, which turned them down. But the directors were pleasantly surprised to get the greenlight shortly after President Donald Trump came into office.

“I think they wanted to show how unique and incredible these people were,” said Schwarz, who is engaged to Clusiau. “Never in a million years did I think it would wind up being so intense.”