POST RELEASE ACCOMPANIMENT PROJECT
HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
Since Freedom for Immigrants’ founding, we have been piloting various forms of true community-based alternatives to detention, starting with our Post Release Accompaniment Program (PRAP). The Post Release Accompaniment Project (PRAP) began as a collaboration between Freedom for Immigrants, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice-CA, and Centro Legal de La Raza in the San Francisco Bay Area to ensure the long-term sustainability of a safe release program for asylum seekers at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, California.
As a volunteer-based initiative, PRAP provided direct services to both people in detention and their loved ones; for example, PRAP volunteers advocated for release from detention as well as provided transportation, hospitality and legal services upon release. Our model challenged the notion that detention is necessary and it provided diverse support to immigrants to ameliorate suffering and achieve freedom.
In the first year and a half, volunteers secured the safe release of approximately 300 asylum seekers, such as Adán. We then expanded the scope of this demonstration model into our current programming.
Adán de Jesús Lima Hernández arrived undocumented and seeking asylum at the U.S. border in March 2014 after surviving a horrific attack on the streets of Guatemala City. Only 17 years old at the time, Adán spent seven months at a shelter for unaccompanied children in Fairfax, California, but on his 18th birthday, he was transferred to a county jail and held in adult immigration detention. Freedom for Immigrants successfully secured Adan’s release from detention and coordinated with community volunteers for his long-term housing and transportation to immigration court appearances as well as raised funds to help support Adán personal costs.