Court orders restoration of immigration detention hotline featured in Orange Is the New Black

The Hollywood Reporter

The National Immigration Detention Hotline, which was shut down last summer two weeks after it was included in the final season of the Netflix prison drama, has been restored. The United States District Court for the Central District of California granted Freedom for Immigrants its application for a preliminary injunction and ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to restore the hotline, which was shut down Aug. 7. The free and confidential resource offering legal assistance to people in immigration detention had been around since 2013, but ICE shut it down in wake of the widespread publicity from Orange Is the New Black. That prompted Freedom for Immigrants to file a federal lawsuit against ICE in December. "For too long, ICE has censored our speech and invented imaginary rules to terminate our programs. Today, the court saw through this farce and restored our national hotline," said Christina Fialho, co-founder and executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, in a statement. "This case should remind us all that the Trump administration is not a law unto itself, but rather accountable to the people and our Constitution."