Grantee Profile

Families for Freedom

"People talk about the deportation of a loved one in the same way that they talk about the death of a loved one," says Janis Rosheuvel, the executive director of Families for Freedom, a group that organizes families with members at risk for deportation. Janis continues, "The impacts are the same as when someone passes away. Men of color are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice and deportation systems-- so a lot of times women and children are the ones left behind to cope when their loved one is deported. I know several families who ended up in public shelters because it took two incomes to pay for the home or the apartment that they were living in."

Families for Freedom began in 2002, shortly after 9/11 when hundreds of people of Arab, Muslim or South Asian descent were being rounded up, to be held in prison for weeks or months on end, in line for deportation. The organization's office is in the Marble Collegiate Church building on West 29th Street. It's a typical organizing office-- a warren of rooms, packed with desks, computers, chairs, books and papers, the walls are covered with posters and heavily marked-up calendars. The phones ring with an insistent regularity. The office has no windows; the focus is on the work, always the work.

It's wrenching when a life partner, a child, a parent, a friend is suddenly taken out of the everyday life of a family and a community. Depending on the circumstances of the arrest and imprisonment, there may be little word on where they are and what the course of their case might be. If the loved one has health issues, intervening in their medical care can be a daunting challenge. Particularly for children, the impact of having a family member-- a parent often-- taken away from them can disrupt their childhood experience and even development.  There can be acting out in school and other areas of their lives. Because the parent isn't there physically for them, parenting moves into this new arena of phone, Skype and email parenting at a distance.

Kathy McArdle is a board member of FFF. This multimedia story in ColorLines tells the story of the 5:00 AM raid on her home and the deportation of her partner, Calvin James. After Calvin James' deportation, Kathy lost her job, and then their apartment, ending up in the shelter system. Finally, after several years of struggle, in December 2009, she has attained permanent housing.

What's Really Going On?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ICE has used the threat of terrorism to target people who are not suspected of being terrorists, and the overwhelming majority of the those people are people of color. In significant ways, the New York City administration has been complicit in this targeting. Executive Order 41, which was signed by Mayor Bloomberg, prohibits civil servants from asking immigration status when people are trying to access city services. In practice, this order has no mechanisms for enforcement. The biggest loophole is within the criminal justice system. Young men of color are being profiled for random 'stop and frisk' by the police. If the police claim to suspect criminal activity-- it doesn't have to be proven-- they have the right to ask the suspect his or her immigration status. Then they're taken to Rikers Island, New York City's jail complex that houses over 13,000 people on any given day. At Rikers, non-citizens are interviewed by immigration authorities, and more often than not, subsequently shuttled into deportation proceedings.

Because of this marked racial profiling, more and more young people of Afro-Caribbean descent are being deported. According to Janis, "New York is an exception. Nationwide, most people who are deported are Mexican. In New York City, it's Dominicans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Haitians and Guyanese."

Solution: Education, Organizing, Policy Change

Families for Freedom's work is broken up into support, education and advocacy.

Support is critical all through the process, but particularly in the beginning when families are reeling from the shock of deportation proceedings. Families for Freedom provides a space to support each other, to cry, and reflect about why this is happening but also to fight back against the societal shame of criminal sentencing and deportation.

After that, the education and advocacy kicks in. For people directly affected by the issue, Families for Freedom conducts Know Your Rights presentations throughout the city and on Rikers Island. They have once-a-week collective clinics, where people talk about their individual cases but also raise their consciousness that wrongful deportation is a systemic problem, and the best long-term solution is to get active to change unjust immigration laws and policies impacting all our families.

Of course, it will take a movement to reform immigration. So Families for Freedom gives presentations to people who are not at risk themselves-- for instance, church or student groups-- who want to understand the issue more fully so that they can constructively engage with others to change the immigration system. The Speaker's Bureau is a 10-week train-the-trainer course for FFF members and organizations that want to do know-your-rights presentations in their community.

On the policy front, FFF is working on two campaigns. Child Citizen Protection Act, HR 182, is federal legislation to give more discretion to immigration judges. Currently, immigration judges can only look at immigration status and criminal history when ruling to deport somebody or not. None of the other aspects of an immigrant's life can be considered relevant. A person's work history, family, contributions and ties to the community are not allowed to enter into the judge's decision.  This legislation would give judges the ability to take the best interests of U.S. citizen children into account before deciding to deport their immigrant parents.

On a second front, FFF is working to push foreign consulates to protect the rights of their nationals. In order for a deportation to happen, the receiving country needs to issue travel documents assuring admission into the country of origin. As Janis puts it, "In order for this country to send you, the home country needs to receive you. So there's a big power in issuing travel documents." Families for Freedom is working with consulates to allow their nationals to exhaust all options before they issue travel documents, and to make sure that they indeed have a place to return before being deported.

Scarce Resources

Families for Freedom does all of of this with a staff of two, plus a crew of volunteers. Says Janis, "Our members are the lifeblood of the organization. We have about 100 member families, usually with multiple family members involved. The two staff members make sure that things keep churning everyday in the office. But all of our work is organized into committees. Members staff those committees and do the strategic thinking, and along with staff implement the programs and events."

But between the demands of maintaining its ambitious program and fundraising, the staff at Families for Freedom is stretched thin. North Star Fund's ongoing support since 2003 has proven critical to the continuity of the organization.

Says Janis, "North Star Fund has stayed with us through this difficult time, always understand the value of organizing. So few funders understand that organizing yields are not going to happen necessarily tomorrow, but that we're building a movement for change that is going to happen down the road. North Star understands what's happening, and does everything that it can to support us."