We have your first look at Guerrilla Habeas, a powerful documentary premiering on MSNBC next year that humanizes immigrant families caught up in deportation proceedings.

The short film directed by Betsy Hershey and Emma Wall held its world premiere last September at the Telluride Film Festival. It focuses on the work of two lawyers for the Rapid Defense Network – Sarah Gillman and Gregory Copeland – who are using innovative means to win the release of immigrants facing immediate removal from the country.

“Guerrilla Habeas explores the pervasive lack of representation in our immigration courts, the liberties violated by this system, and the lives and families being torn apart from deportations,” according to a release from MSNBC. “This searing documentary lays bare the shortage of legal representation for immigrants desperately attempting to navigate a complicated, overburdened and broken system.”

Attorneys Gillman and Copeland argue immigration law enforcement is characterized by “rampant and illegal deportations,” and that American immigration law itself is fundamentally racist in nature (citing, for instance, the Chinese Exclusion Act, in force from 1882 to 1943, which barred Chinese people, with few exceptions, from entering the United States).

Guerrilla Habeas is part of MSNBC’s documentary series The Turning Point, in partnership with executive producer Trevor Noah, which “highlights a range of hot button issues affecting the world” along with producers TIME Studios, Noah’s Day Zero Productions, Sugar23, and Mainstay. The film will premiere on MSNBC in 2023, but no precise airdate has been announced.

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