Families for Freedom
Subkash Kateel, Maira Muentes, Nina Shahani & Aarti Shanani, Co-Founders
Families for Freedom (FFF) is a network of support, education and action, and an organizing center for immigrants and communities affected by detention and deportation. FFF members are primarily low-income people of color, current and former detainees, loved ones of people being deported and individuals who are at risk of deportation based on immigration status. FFF provides direct support to detainees and their families, conducts outreach in the most affected communities and raises public awareness about the deportation system and the erosion of immigrants’ civil rights.
FFF emerged in 2002 to provide resources and a network for detainees and their families who learn from one another, organize campaigns around individual cases, do community mobilization, legal advocacy, media work and congressional outreach. FFF collaborates with immigrant rights and criminal justice advocates and provides training. The organization has developed information kits that encourage community leaders to work toward a common agenda to change the immigration system.
FFF believes that detention and deportation are extreme symptoms of growing racial and economic injustice and that an apartheid system is emerging where immigrants of color are treated as three-fifths of a person under the law. FFF believes that current deportation policies should be abolished.