Spring brings changes to FFI and Southern detention landscape!

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Dear Friends and Supporters,

The Freedom for Immigrants’ team has been hard at work on several initiatives and campaigns to meet the challenges of today in the movement to abolish immigration detention. We are excited to share several wins and updates with you in this edition of our newsletter.

As part of these initiatives, we will be communicating with you on a more regular basis to keep you informed about our progress and what our hotline and visitation network are monitoring in detention throughout the country. Please take advantage of the “Update Your Preferences” section at the bottom of this email to tailor your email settings and select which topics—ranging from news and updates, detention monitoring, policy advocacy, community-based strategies, calls to action, and volunteer opportunities—you would like to receive regular updates for.

Lastly, FFI is excited to announce that we will be launching a national search for our next Executive Director this spring! We look forward to informing you with key updates throughout the process.

In Solidarity,

Sierra Kraft and Layla Razavi
Interim Co-Executive Directors
Freedom for Immigrants

Welcome our new team members!

Wensley recently joined FFI as the first Development Director. Wensley is building a supportive community of individual donors and foundations that equips Freedom for Immigrants’ programs and campaigns with resources to achieve abolition. Wensley helps ensure that people who support FFI have an intimate understanding of FFI’s mission by drawing on the stories and lived experiences of people directly impacted by immigration detention.

As a first-generation son of immigrants, Wensley learned firsthand how communities benefit when immigrants are welcomed and supported by witnessing the experience of his family. Growing up in the Bronx, Wensley’s family served as a host foster home, often opening their home to immigrant families. Through this experience, Wensley saw how people were directly impacted by immigration policies that either tore families apart or afforded them the opportunity to thrive.

Andrea joined FFI as Policy Director in February of 2022. In her role, she represents FFI before federal offices, Congress, the administration, and government agencies. Andrea also works with the Defund Hate Coalition and other partners to advocate for drastic reductions in the funding levels for immigration detention and enforcement. With over 10 years of legal and policy experience, Andrea brings innovative advocacy tactics to end the detention of immigrants.

She previously worked at the Center for Victims of Torture, where as Senior Policy Counsel, she inaugurated the organization’s asylum advocacy portfolio by forging and developing partnerships with key partners in the field. Her bold advocacy led UNHCR to fund her organization to provide training on vicarious trauma to service providers working on the Mexico-US border.

Andrea has represented hundreds of individuals facing deportation, many of whom were detained. This experience informs her advocacy on a daily basis and helps her to understand the damage that detention causes to the mental and physical health of the individuals in detention and their loved ones on the outside.

Learn more about Wensley and Andrea here

Detention Monitoring & Investigations

Movement Victories in the South!

This Spring, we celebrate the power of internal resistance and community solidarity which has led to the closure of the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama and the termination of a critical detention contract provision for the Glades County Detention Center in Florida! On March 24, the Biden administration slated the notorious Etowah County Jail for closure, a victory many years in the making. In 2015, Freedom for Immigrants called for the jail’s shuttering in filing a multi-individual civil rights complaint exposing physical and medical abuse alongside 20 people currently and formerly detained, including FFI Advisory Council member Sylvester Owino. In 2019, FFI sued against the closure of the Etowah Visitation Program after the jail blocked visitation in retaliation to a large protest in which Sylvester and others condemned the mistreatment and called for their liberation. Throughout the pandemic, people in detention organized and sued, while the Shut Down Etowah campaign kept fighting. “We are not going to stop until this is done,” said Sylvester Owino back in 2015. And we didn’t. Success!

On the same day of the Etowah victory, the #ShutDownGlades Coalition succeeded in pressuring the Biden administration to terminate the “guaranteed minimum” provision of the Glades County Detention Center contract, which required ICE to pay Glades County for 300 detention beds on a monthly basis. For years, immigrants inside Glades peacefully resisted while the community amplified their efforts through protests, public testimony, and civil rights complaints. The announcement of the guaranteed minimum elimination followed members of congress’ call for the termination of the contract provision and the complete closure of Glades. People detained at Glades have for years faced unimaginable harm including death threats, acute medical neglect, physical assault, pervasive anti-Black racism, carbon monoxide poisoning, and exposure to toxic chemical spray with long-term health consequences.

Despite these abuses, people in detention and the #ShutDownGlades Coalition continued to organize and push forward. Today, no immigrants remain in ICE custody and there’s no more guaranteed minimum in the ICE contract, two wins that the coalition has worked hard to achieve. We’ll continue to fight until the Glades contract is fully terminated and the jail is permanently closed!

2022 Reverend John Guttermann Legacy Award

We are excited to announce that Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants (ICDI) is the recipient of this year’s Reverend John Guttermann Legacy Award, an honor presented annually to recognize the achievements of local immigration detention visitation groups and their critical contributions to the detention abolition movement. Based in Chicago, ICDI formed one of the first Visitation Groups in the FFI National Visitation Network approximately 15 years ago when leaders of all faiths joined together to advocate for state legislation that established the right to visit immigrants held in ICE custody. Read more about ICDI’s recent work here.

Monitoring Fellowship

This Spring, we celebrate the incredible work of Monitoring Fellows Uziel Araiza, Petra Mujica, and Karina Montelong! Each monitoring fellow is placed within one of the community-based groups in the FFI National Visitation Network. One of FFI’s newest initiatives, the Monitoring Fellowship provides a year-long stipend to people with lived experiences of the immigration detention system, ensuring those closest to the issue have the financial resources to dedicate their time and talents to lead in the detention abolition movement.

Uziel, Petra, and Karina worked with Laredo Immigrant Alliance, Iowans for Immigrant Freedom (IFIF), and Advocate Visitors with Immigrants in Detention (AVID), respectively. They leveraged their personal experiences and expertise to provide vital leadership within their local communities, including: supporting abuse reporting and release efforts; raising awareness through "Know Your Rights" presentations; and facilitating connection and communication between people in detention and their families and loved ones on the outside.

Join us in saying thank you to Uziel, Petra, and Karina for their incredible movement work!

Community-Based Strategies

Freedom for Immigrants works to provide viable and humane alternatives to the present carceral system by shifting focus from enforcement toward supporting communities and families. FFI is partnering with Cardozo Law School to continue to refine our vision for community-based decarceration strategies to address these needs.

Immigration Bond Fund

Over the holiday season in 2021 and the beginning of the new year, donors like you gave close to $70,000 to the FFI National Immigration Detention Bond Fund, enabling us to free eight people with bonds ranging from $5k to $20k. While our core mission is to #FreeThemAll and ultimately end the government’s system of charging exorbitant amounts of money in exchange for people's freedom, every bond paid in the meantime frees another person from the harms of immigration detention and reunites them with their family and loved ones.

Thank you to all who are currently sustaining this work, and if you haven’t yet had the chance to give the gift of freedom and are able to do so, please consider donating today.

Policy Advocacy

As co-organizers of New York’s Dignity Not Detention coalition, FFI recently participated in a week of action to highlight the NY Dignity Not Detention Act. On February 13, FFI participated in a car rally at the Orange County Correctional Facility (OCCF) to denounce ongoing abuse and neglect at the jail and demand the release of all detained individuals. On March 1, 2022 FFI facilitated the submission of written and verbal testimonies obtained through FFI’s National Immigration Detention Hotline by 20 individuals detained at OCCF and the Buffalo Service Processing Center to a New York City Council hearing. The testimony detailed ICE’s systematic abuse and neglect of detained people who went on hunger strike. Then, on March 3, FFI joined a state legislature roundtable in Albany to express the urgency in passing the Dignity Not Detention Act to New York lawmakers. As a result, the coalition secured additional co-sponsors for the bill!

Note from the Development Director,

When we build and advocate for community-based decarceration strategies and fight to close detention centers, we make significant important strides toward our goal of abolition. The complaints we file, reports we publish, free phone calls we provide through our national hotline, and bonds we post all directly help those currently languishing in the inhumane immigration detention system. None of it would be possible without your support, THANK YOU!

We are incredibly grateful to have a strong network of allies and advocates working alongside us in this movement to end detention.

In Solidarity,

Wensley Peguero
[email protected]
Development Director
Freedom for Immigrants

Show your support today!

P.S. Please take a moment to edit your communication preferences below so we can provide you with the updates you are most interested in. You will receive a separate email to confirm your preferences. Please feel free to email me with any questions.

Freedom for Immigrants

1322 Webster St Ste 300

Oakland, CA 94612-3218

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