LOS ANGELES, CA — Today, Freedom for Immigrants relaunched IMMPRINT, its online media outlet, which focuses on news about immigration detention, investigative reporting, and storytelling.
IMMPRINT provides readers with stories, poems, artwork, photographs and reported pieces by individuals who have been impacted by our country’s inhumane immigration system. Through IMMPRINT, detained immigrants, family members and advocates share their experiences, hopes, and fears. IMMPRINT serves as a safe space for the people who President Trump has repeatedly demonized and attempted to silence, as demonstrated by the disturbing and dangerous anti-immigrant rhetoric in his State of the Union address.
But no one can silence voices yearning to be heard. IMMPRINT is a place where the resistance from behind walls comes to life, not only to bear witness, but to compel us to take action.
“IMMPRINT has been about providing people in immigration detention with a platform for their thoughts and stories long before immigration detention was in the mainstream news,” said Gretta Soto Moreno, a member of Freedom for Immigrants’ Leadership Council and transgender activist who spent over three years in immigration detention. “I’m happy that IMMPRINT will continue to deepen the national conversation on solutions for ending immigration detention.”
IMMPRINT is entirely volunteer-run. It was founded by Tina Shull, who was a 2016 Soros Justice Fellow with Freedom for Immigrants. Tina became a historian and writer after her husband was detained and deported. Cindy Knoebel is our current volunteer editor of IMMPRINT. She is an award-winning writer with two decades of experience in communications.
“At IMMPRINT, we seek to amplify the voices of those held inside so they can be heard on the outside. In this way, we aim to raise awareness of the suffering and devastation inflicted on the people and families who have been caught in the U.S. immigration dragnet to rally public support against immigrant jails and prisons,” said Knoebel.
In conjunction with the launch, IMMPRINT also is releasing its inaugural newsletter to be delivered to individuals in immigration detention. Containing stories from inside immigration detention and a Freedom for Immigrants’ “membership card,” the quarterly newsletter is designed to convey to people locked up in detention that they are not alone, and that their stories and experiences deserve to be told.
Among the stories in today's edition of IMMPRINT are an essay by Freedom for Immigrants’ staff on how the movements for detention abolition and universal legal representation for immigrants share a common goal and a poem by a woman in a detention center in Wisconsin.
Have a story, poem, video or art to submit? If so, please email editor-in-chief, Cindy Knoebel, at cknoebel@freedomforimmigrants.org.
Know someone who might like IMMPRINT? Please help us spread the word: Here’s the subscribe form.
Know someone in detention who would like to receive the IMMPRINT newsletter? Please contact Cindy Knoebel, at cknoebel@freedomforimmigrants.org. to request copies/quantities for distribution.