The Chagos Islands sit in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s their entire population was removed to clear the way for a US military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia. The film follows that operation through interviews with Chagossians who describe being loaded onto cargo ships with only what they could carry and dumped into the slums of Port Louis, Mauritius, and through the British officials whose own memos and cables left what one calls a paper trail documenting the decision as it was made. Archival footage tracks the base's construction and the diplomatic cover used to keep the expulsion out of public view for years. The film lays out the mechanics of the arrangement between London and Washington, the compensation islanders say never arrived, and the legal case that eventually led international judges to call the removal a crime against humanity. It closes with the islanders' decades-long fight to return to a home now fenced off as a foreign military installation.