A California-based immigrant rights group, Freedom for Immigrants, is suing the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for shutting down a toll-free hotline that gave detained immigrants the ability to report custody issues. The group filed a lawsuit last week to reinstate its National Detention Hotline, a free and confidential source.
Freedom for Immigrants created the hotline in 2013 to allow immigrants in custody to not only connect with their families, but find resources, and report physical and verbal abuse. The hotline was shut down Aug. 7 by ICE, two weeks after it was featured in the final season of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black.
Characters in the show discretely shared the number for the hotline and even warned one another to be careful. “You have to be careful, though. Apparently, if they figure out that you’re using the hotline, Big Brother shuts it down.” The warning became true when ICE later blocked all access to the hotline stating it was not a government-approved assistance provider.
According to Los Angeles Magazine, ICE told Freedom for Immigrants that toll-free numbers for pro bono attorneys and organizations must be approved by the Executive Office for Immigration Review and that those not on the list are removed from the system. ICE standards allow detainees to make free calls to make free calls to legal service providers on the approved list “for the purpose of obtaining initial legal representation.”
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The complaint filed by the nonprofit states that ICE shut down the hotline in retaliation for the exercising of First Amendment rights advocating on behalf of persons in immigration detention, the Hollywood Reporter reported. The complaint was accompanied by a letter of support signed by members of Congress and producers and actors from the show, in partnership with 121 organizations.
"When operational, our free and confidential hotline received up to 14,000 calls per month from people in immigration detention who were isolated and suffering serious abuses,” Christina Fialho, the group’s co-executive director, said in a statement Tuesday. “ICE shut down our Hotline because we drew attention to the inhumanity of immigration detention. It is only the latest in a long pattern of retaliation against Freedom for Immigrants. Today, we have said no more."
While the federal agency does not comment on pending litigation, ICE spokesman Bryan Cox told NBC News, the hotline had been removed last year from the list of pro bono legal service providers immigrants can call toll-free because the organization was found to be violating ICE’s telephone rules. For confidentiality purposes, the phone line is not monitored or recorded, Cox said, but he claimed the group was using the hotline for three-way calling to connect detainees to family.
Two months ago, ICE faced another lawsuit resulting from Netflix’s series Living Undocumented. The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri had launched a lawsuit against two ICE agents over the “cruel mistreatment” of an immigration attorney featured in the documentary.