Christine Mladic Janney

Freedom for Immigrants’ highly dedicated team works to end U.S. immigration detention by monitoring human rights abuses, elevating stories, building community-based alternatives to detention, and advocating for system change. The heart of this work is community-based volunteers who visit people in detention, building relationships that have the power to change lives and systems. Currently, Freedom for Immigrants supports a network of approximately 4,500 volunteers visiting at 69 U.S.-based immigrant prisons through Freedom for Immigrants-affiliated visitation programs. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought public health sharply into focus, and it has exposed how immigration detention is a global issue. Since March 2020, Freedom for Immigrants has been working with partners in the United Kingdom, Spain, and India to expose how our immigration detention systems are intertwined. The Leading Edge Fellow will take this work to the next level, representing Freedom for Immigrants in international fora on the topic of immigration detention and undertaking three research projects over the course of the fellowship.