Families for Freedom

North Star Fund made a $2,500 Rapid Response grant to Families for Freedom for an emergency campaign to reinstate FFF’s hotline in detention centers.

Families For Freedom

Families for Freedom (FFF) is a New York-based multi-ethnic human rights organization by and for families facing and fighting deportation.

Why this?

Family For Freedom’s hotline serves several complementary functions:

  • organizing detainees
  • educating them about their rights
  • documenting patterns and practices within detention centers
  • monitoring conditions within detention centers
  • connecting folks with the media, as well as family and legal representation

With the constantly shifting and increasingly punitive immigration landscape, the hotline is an essential tool for FFF’s to monitor and document conditions inside of detention centers. FFF received over 169,000 calls from detainees during 2017, and was able to respond to 4,000 of them. So far in 2018, they have received 203,466 calls and have been able to respond to over 4,700 of those calls. FFF is the only non-legal organization with a free national hotline number.

Why now?

On October 10, 2018, ICE terminated FFF’s contract and cut off their access to detainees. Terminating FFF’s hotline is another example of the ways in which ICE and the Trump administration are accelerating deportations by limiting detainees access to information and legal support, as well as organizing support.

This change also adds an additional layer of secrecy to conditions inside detention centers by cutting off the channels of communication available to detainees. FFF is currently mounting a campaign to reinstate the hotline using a strategy that mobilizes folks both inside and outside detention centers.

What can you do?

Follow Families for Freedom on Facebook.

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