(MILD ‘OITNB’ SEASON 7 SPOILERS AHEAD)
Unlike in prison, detainees do not have a right to a lawyer for their immigration hearing. They can't make a phone call until money has been added to their account, but no one knows where they are and the machine is broken anyway. Maritza can't even send a letter because she has no money for a stamp. Blanca tells Maritza that it's worse than prison; the ICE agents worse than the guards.
Other characters in the show come to the rescue as best as they can: They discreetly share the number for Freedom for Immigrants, with a scripted warning that ended up eerily accurate.
“You have to be careful, though. Apparently if they figure out that you’re using the hotline, Big Brother shuts it down.”
Sure enough, on Aug. 7, less than two weeks of the entire “OITNB” farewell season dropping on the streaming service, ICE had blocked all access to the FFI hotline.
Why? Freedom for Immigrants wasn’t a government-approved assistance provider.
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, which oversees the immigration courts, every three years and that those no longer appearing on the EOIR list will be removed from the system.
ICE spokesman Shawn Neudauer dodged the Los Angeles Times’ questions about the Freedom for Immigrants hotline shutdown, and whether or not television shows are informing immigration policies.
Instead, he offered boilerplate.
(Neudauer) said detainees are allowed to make free calls to legal service providers on the ICE-approved list “for the purpose of obtaining initial legal representation.”
“Pro bono organizations found to be violating these rules may be removed from the platform,” he said.
Now let’s back up a second, and explain how these detainee hotlines work. An Alabama company called Talton Communications has long held a profitable contract with ICE, where they not only provide the phones available to detainees, but pocket the money spent to actually make calls, which cost as much as 25 cents per minute in 2012.
Traditional toll-free numbers don’t work on Talton devices, so organizations seeking to help immigrants use what are known as hotlines. “Hotlines,” in regards to ICE detainee communication, are four-digit “extensions” that connect the user with the organization, free of charge.
In an interview with the L.A. Times, FFI co-executive director Christine Fialho states that the organization once ran three hotlines, serving as many as 14,000 detainees per month. Notably, Fialho says that FFI was never on the very EOIR approved list that is being invoked to keep the organization from serving their clients.
According to FFI, they were issued their first hotline extension to serve detained immigrants in 2013. It remained functional nationwide until October, when access was abruptly limited to detainees in less than 10 detention centers in one state, a decision that FFI has been fighting ever since.
In October 2018, less than a week after Freedom for Immigrants sent a letter to ICE and CCA/CoreCivic regarding the retaliatory shut down of their affiliated visitation program SOLACE in San Diego, the aforementioned pro bono line became restricted to eight facilities in Florida, when previously it was available at all or nearly all other detention facilities.
As a result, 15 members of Congress sent ICE’s Deputy Director a letter expressing their concern.
Yet, since October 2018, Freedom for Immigrants’ pro bono extension line has remained restricted to Florida facilities.
FFI also maintains that both the October restrictions and the current shutdown are retaliatory violations of the First Amendment, citing, in particular, the massive amount of press that FFI and those affiliated with “OITNB,” including prominent actors and writers, did to help the public understand that FFI was, indeed, a real resource for detained immigrants. Several “OITNB” actors and producers, as well as 121 other organizations, including the ACLU and SPLC, have signed on in support.
Not every current active hotline is on the revered EOIR list, asserts FFI’s cease and desist letter, sent Thursday and addressed to Matthew T. Albence, Acting Director of ICE, and cc’d to leaders of Talton Communications. Additionally, the organization cites what they consider to be a nearly-annual pattern of retaliation by ICE, going all the way back to the second term of Barack Obama.
The organization vowed further action if ICE and Talton don’t restore their original (nationwide) reach within ten days.