In June 2025, FFI launched Project Keep Away (PKA), a groundbreaking initiative designed to disrupt the prison-to-immigration detention pipeline by empowering community members through educational resources, in-person programming, and a free, live helpline. By supporting individuals incarcerated in prisons, we’re bridging advocacy between the immigration detention and prison systems. In its first several months of operation, staff worked with incarcerated people through 46 calls and messages from people in prisons and 62 calls from their family members. PKA launched its helplineand in-person programming inside the California Correctional Women’s Facility (CCWF) and the California Institution for Women (CIW) prisons in California. 

In line with FFI’s renewed mission statement and theory of change, stopping ICE transfers that feed the prison-to-ICE pipeline is crucial to disrupting the larger detention and deportation dragnet and working intersectionally toward the abolition of all forms of incarceration, as well as directly supporting FFI’s goal of Black liberation. PKA builds on years of advocacy addressing the intersection of the prison and detention systems, such as our work on the New Way Forward Act, a federal bill that would limit ICE transfers by rolling back harmful, criminalizing laws. 

We advanced our mission of abolition through narrative change projects and strategic media campaigns. Our media work empowers incarcerated leaders and their allies to challenge injustice through storytelling — in their own words, on their own terms. In Full Year 2025, FFI landed 344 print and digital media hits in national and local outlets across the country. These media mentions accumulated a monthly average of 15.68 million impressions and a total of 13,477 engagements on social media.

In addition to supporting currently and formerly detained leaders share their stories in local and national media outlets, FFI contributed to major investigations uncovering immigration detention from outlets like the The Washington Post, WIRED Magazine, and CNN, as well as other articles in outlets like Newsweek, Marie Claire, Forbes, Prism, and more. We also published several opinion pieces, shifting the narrative on topics like private prisons cashing in on detention, Guantánamo Bay being used to detain immigrants, and the toxic rhetoric around the border. These editorial pieces served as crucial opportunities to present our vision of dignity and justice for all people, while building awareness, resistance, and long-term popular support among the general public for abolition. 

In Full Year 2025, we laid the groundwork for our Organizing and Advocacy Department, which  supports people inside of detention through strategic resource sharing and inside-outside organizing tactics. We made significant progress on our new and upgraded version of our interactive detention map, which will track locally accessible legal, medical, and other community-based services available to detained immigrants, their loved ones, and organizers across the country. Rather than accept scarcity, we are equipping community members with the tools to self-advocate. Our next step is to translate this infrastructure into leadership development opportunities for people inside detention. We have developed tools, leadership training curricula, fellowships, resources like legal and wellness packets, and other materials that incarcerated organizers can use to build power within and across detention facilities. 

Additionally, in response to overwhelming needs of the community amid the administration's unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation, we hosted three Know Your Rights and Family Emergency Preparedness planning sessions and trainings to reach at-risk community members in Los Angeles and Orange County. We also distributed thousands of flyers, stickers, and cards with FFI hotline information across major cities in the US at protests and community information boards. 

This past year, we strengthened our National Immigration Detention Hotline, which remains a critical tool for the future of our Organizing and Advocacy Department, resource distribution, and exposure of abuse. Amid increased call volume to the hotline, we’ve continued to recruit, train, and mobilize over 150 volunteers to support the hotline, maintain our Nationwide ICE Detention Facility Resource Directory, and connect people inside to legal advocates, political allies, and loved ones. From July 2024 to May 2025, our Detention Hotline answered a total of 12,567 calls from more than 50 detention facilities across the United States. During this time, we filed 26 complaints to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL), reflecting the dire conditions and human rights abuses occurring inside detention. 

With resources stretched thin, the ability to self-advocate has become increasingly critical. As a result, there has been a growing demand for pro se assistance, KYR materials, and individualized accompaniment to help people navigate these challenging systems. To respond, we have collaborated with universities to develop and distribute resources: legal one-pagers on how to advocate for legal resolutions that protect against deportation, and health guides tailored to managing chronic illnesses inside detention with limited medical and commissary options. These resources include pro se packets that reduce people’s dependency on overwhelmed legal systems. 

FFI is entering a critical phase of expansion within our Organizing and Advocacy Department. As political conditions remain unpredictable, we are investing in the systems, tools, and people required to meet this moment with grounded, strategic action. This expansion reflects a long-term commitment to building organizing capacity that centers the leadership of formerly and currently incarcerated individuals and advances the abolition of immigration detention. Our organizing department remains the central hub for FFI’s movement work, connecting leaders inside ICE detention with the tools, training, and networks needed to drive resistance from the inside out. 

To sustain and scale our organizing work, we are launching a new Resource Mobilization Team. The Resource Mobilization Team will develop and distribute critical pro se legal materials and medical one pagers to people inside so that they can better navigate and survive their time in detention. As part of our internal reassessment, FFI concluded we must build the power of BIPOC individuals with lived experience of incarceration, and to do that, we must ensure that organizers directly impacted by detention, especially those currently detained, have access to the basic resources they need to survive, stabilize, and lead. This new initiative will strengthen our National Immigration Detention Hotline by anchoring a team whose sole focus is connecting people inside detention with life-saving resources. We’ll train volunteers in resource mobilization to support detained individuals’ access to attorneys, bond support, food, mental health care, and other critical needs that are routinely and deliberately withheld in ICE custody. We will also expand FFI’s Nationwide ICE Detention Facility Resource Directory to include trusted legal and social service providers, pro se materials, and lesser-known aid sources, leading to targeted outreach and research to ensure these resources remain up-to-date and accessible. 

Inside detention, resources are scarce and legal aid is inaccessible for most. ICE is notorious for ignoring the medical needs of detained immigrants. Rather than accept scarcity, we are equipping community members with the tools to self-advocate. FFI collaborated with Stanford Law students and Stanford School of Medicine to develop legal one-pagers on how to advocate for legal resolutions that protect against deportation and health guides tailored to managing chronic illnesses inside detention with limited commissary options. The pro-se materials include resources such as how to prepare your asylum claim and templates to request a hearing be rescheduled, among other legal guides and resources, while the medical resources include health packets to treat oft-neglected medical conditions inside detention and guides on how to safely enter and break a hunger strike, among other medical resources. The Resource Mobilization Team will ensure these resources get in the hands of people inside detention. 

We are preparing to re-release our interactive detention map in early 2026. The newly-updated map will include a searchable database of key information about ICE detention facilities and the types of resources from local groups that can be accessed by people in detention, their family members, and organizers based on their location. The map will serve as the backbone of the Resource Mobilization Team, while providing an accessible and interactive resource for activists across the country to use in their own organizing work. New information in the map will build upon the data currently available in the original version of the map, as well as the input from thousands of map update survey takers, including community members, journalists, and researchers. 

As part of our recent strategic planning goals, FFI is revitalizing IMMPrint – our abolitionist media publication written by and for people impacted by immigration detention. IMMPrint serves as a community resource to exchange stories, ideas, support materials, and arts related to the movement to end detention and build a future of collective liberation in which all immigrants can live freely and thrive. IMMPrint leverages the power of storytelling and information sharing to further this mission and bolster broader abolition efforts across the U.S. IMMPrint is the only national publication specifically dedicated to centering the voices and experiences of people in immigration detention. It serves a dual role: nurturing storytelling as a tool of resistance, and supporting broader abolitionist campaigns through popular education and public engagement. The connections and visibility it creates allow leaders to share critical information for survival as well as bolster organizing and detention abolition strategies, like fostering community consensus around key targets and drivers of detention. Beyond its organizing function, IMMPrint supports detained organizers and leaders in developing their voices, writing skills, and advocacy capacities. Through storytelling and public education, contributors are able to reach a wide array of audiences, from congressional offices to the general public, and help build collective understanding and momentum toward systemic change.

Following the successful launch of Project Keep Away (PKA) in FY25, we are preparing to deepen and expand this critical program. Initial responses from incarcerated individuals affirm that PKA is meeting a vital and previously-unmet need. People have expressed that our materials and support are accessible and necessary, but the current political climate has created new barriers. Fear under the new administration has made people hesitant to speak about their immigration status, particularly within prison settings where all communications are monitored. To address this, we are successfully building relationships and trust inside the prisons we serve, ensuring people know they can engage with us safely. As the number of calls to our helpline has continued to grow since our launch, and with our presence at events like the Pride gathering at CIW where we distributed materials to hundreds of people, we’ve greatly strengthened our visibility and connection. Looking ahead, we plan to expand PKA to additional California prisons in response to ongoing demand. This expansion will allow us to reach more people at risk of ICE transfer and strengthen the movement to interrupt the prison-to-detention pipeline. We’ll also continue to field calls from community members outside of carceral settings who are at risk of arrest, as this need has expanded drastically under the Trump administration. 

Freedom for Immigrants will continue its narrative and culture change work with the following initiatives and projects: 

• Connect people in detention with opportunities to share their stories in the media;

• Publish an op-ed in a national media outlet centered on combatting criminalizing narratives and providing a positive alternative vision to build from;

• Co-facilite an interactive series of messaging workshops and media trainings for organizers and impacted community alongside the Comm/Unity network;

• Provide tangible communications support to Black-led immigration groups, including by building web pages and educational social media posts for Black-led campaigns; 

• Develop and distribute to organizers and partner organizations messaging resources that both respond to current events and provide affirmative messaging for our vision;

• Build new relationships and manage existing ones with journalists in order to strengthen FFI’s impact on news coverage of detention and related topics, and provide people in detention with opportunities to share their stories with vetted and trusted reporters;

• Maintain FFI’s media operations, including updating press lists, releasing press releases and statements, developing pitches, and responding to media inquiries