Federal Policy Advocacy

• Through comprehensive detention monitoring and reporting, Freedom for Immigrants educated legislators on ICE’s lethal response to the pandemic in immigration detention, helping to introduce and endorse the COVID-19 in Immigration Detention Data Transparency Act in both houses of Congress.

• Despite CDC and public health expert recommendations to limit transferring detained immigrants and incarcerated individuals between facilities, ICE continued to transfer immigrants. Freedom for Immigrants helped draft and endorsed the End Transfers of Detained Immigrants Act, legislation which would immediately prevent ICE from transferring people in detention between ICE facilities or from federal, state, and local prisons during the pandemic.

• Freedom for Immigrants stood alongside partner organizations in calling on ICE to reduce its detention levels. Freedom for Immigrants utilized its biweekly monitoring reports on COVID-19 to help push for free and adequate access to soap and phone services for those currently in ICE detention in the HEROES Act COVID-19 relief legislation, which passed the House of Representatives on May 15, 2020. 

• With the National Immigrant Justice Center, Freedom for Immigrants organized a coalition letter signed by more than 200 groups, advocating for the introduction of the Federal Immigrant Release for Safety and Security Together Act (FIRST Act), which provides urgent and critical restrictions on immigration detention and enforcement during this unprecedented national public health emergency. Large portions of this bill were included in the HEROES Act.

• Freedom for Immigrants submitted comment for the Congressional record for the June 2, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing “Examining Best Practices for Incarceration and Detention During COVID-19 Crisis”

Statewide Policy Advocacy

• Alongside immigrant rights and criminal justice partners, Freedom for Immigrants is working in states like California to encourage investment in re-entry and post-release services.  For example, we released with our partners The Budget to Save Lives, a detailed proposal highlighting the urgent public health needs for the California 2020-21 budget to prioritize decarceration efforts.

• Freedom for Immigrants convenes the Abolish ICE NJ-NY Coalition, which unveiled Executive Orders to the Governors of New York and New Jersey, demanding that they halt the transfer of immigrants to ICE custody, as well as stop any planned expansion.

Administrative Advocacy

• In partnership with Physicians for Human Rights and the Women’s Refugee Commission, Freedom for Immigrants published recommendations for all stakeholders, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sponsoring family members or friends, and organizations offering post-release stabilization services, on steps to take when preparing for an individual’s or a family’s release from immigration detention during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Freedom for Immigrants joined forces with our sister nonprofit in the United Kingdom, the Association of Visitors to Immigration (AVID), to send a letter expressing our moral outrage to the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom. In the letter, we called for the release of all people from immigration detention on behalf of 40 visitation groups representing 1,778 volunteers who regularly visit people in 47 immigration detention facilities in both countries.