OITNB Feature

ICE Shuts Down Immigrant Hotline Featured on ‘OITNB’

The final season of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black highlighted the country’s current immigration detention issue and told the stories of character’s in detainment, fighting to be reunited with their children, and the real-life retaliation that detainees in detention centers undergo.

During one of the episodes of the season, OITNB’s Maritza can be seen helping other migrant detainees by sharing a hotline that helps immigrants with legal aid. The hotline, which is run by California organization Freedom for Immigrants, is real and almost exactly a month after the premiere, the hotline was shut down.

In that same episode, another OITNB character tells Martiza about the hotline, “You have to be careful, though. Apparently, if they figure out that you’re using the hotline, Big Brother shuts it down.”

Now, the Los Angeles Times reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “shut down the real hotline for detained immigrants run by the California group Freedom for Immigrants less than two weeks after it was prominently featured on the show.”

Freedom for Immigrants has been running the free hotline since 2013, as well as visitation programs in detention centers across the U.S. They responded to the shut down with a cease-and-desist letter stating that it’s a violation of free speech and an act of retaliation by the government.

Seven actors and producers from the show, including Diane Guerrero and Laura Gómez, along with 121 organizations including the ACLU signed a letter of support to acting ICE Director Matthew
Albence, demanding that the line be restored.

“Even a freely given benefit such as the pro bono hotline can’t be taken away simply because the government is now unhappy with how we are sharing with the public what we know from our communications with people inside,” Christina Fialho, co-executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, told the L.A. Times.