HOW YOU CAN HELP

Every child deserves opportunities to learn, play, and grow up experiencing safety, care, and belonging. Yet since last January, ICE has robbed thousands of children of the childhood they deserve by placing them in immigrant detention with their families, separating them from their communities, and denying them access to quality education, adequate medical care, clean food and water, and other basic necessities.

Children don’t belong in detention. Immigrant detention is always inhumane, and it’s especially traumatizing for children. That’s why Free Families: the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention (Free Families) is calling on Congress to end the cruel policy of family detention once and for all. We demand that members of Congress:

  1.  pass legislation to end the inhumane policy of family detention once and for all;
  2. cut off the funding for ICE that fuels family detention; and
  3. visit all facilities where families are currently detained to conduct rigorous oversight and hold ICE accountable for ensuring the health and safety of every family they have locked up.

TAKE ACTION

Join us as we raise our voices together to free families! There are multiple ways to get involved:

  1. Use our online action tool to contact your members of Congress, demanding that they take action to end family detention. This tool includes a suggested phone script, a customizable email message, and sample social media posts for tagging your representatives.
  2. Participate in our Paper Dolls to Free Families campaign by creating paper dolls to represent children impacted by detention, decorating the dolls with messages of hope for detained children and families, and demanding an end to family detention by:
    • Tagging your Member of Congress when you post photos of your paper dolls on social media with a demand to end family detention. See our sample social media posts on page 4 of the toolkit.
    • Mailing your paper dolls to your members of Congress, along with a letter demanding that they take action to end family detention. Our toolkit includes a template letter on page 5.
    • Visiting the in-district offices of your members of Congress to deliver your paper dolls in person and speak with staff in person about how important it is to you as a constituent for your representative to work to end family detention. You can uplift our coalition’s policy demands for ending family detention by sharing this leave-behind document with Congressional staff when you visit.
  3. Join our Free Families Summer of Action by planning a pilgrimage, a town hall, or another event calling for an end to family detention and the closure of the ICE family detention facility in Dilley, Texas. Download our Summer of Action toolkit for information and resources about how to participate, including options to engage in the Summer of Action online or in your local community.

 ADDITIONAL ADVOCACY TOOLS AND RESOURCES