Our partnership with Freedom for Immigrants
Freedom for Immigrants is our national partner in our quest to end isolation for those in detention. We affirm the following core principles which they put forth in 2017 :
1. We are dedicated to abolishing immigration detention while supporting the organizing and power-building initiatives of those of us who are most impacted. We support policies that advocate for improved conditions of confinement provided that they do not conflict with our goal of ending the detention system in its entirety.
2. We are a coalition of people who have directly suffered the injustices of immigration detention and people in solidarity. We are guided by the experiences and leadership of those who are or have been on the inside. Forging meaningful person-to-person connections is transformative and foundational to our movement.
3. We know that the immigration detention system is built upon a long history of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. It intentionally functions to dispossess marginalized communities and peoples of their homes and their histories.
4. We understand that our service and advocacy efforts, including visitation, can never be politically neutral. We reject any framework that is purely charitable and replicates structural power inequalities at the interpersonal level.
5. We recognize that the U.S. immigration detention system is the largest in the world and that the U.S. government and prison-industrial complex have played an active role in the development and infrastructure of detention systems in other countries. By changing the ways that immigrants are treated here, we are part of an international movement to transform state and community responses to migration so that immigrants are no longer caged, but welcomed.