Two actors from the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black” visited federal immigration detainees Thursday at a New Jersey jail.

Vicci Martinez and Emily Tarver arrived early in the morning at the Hudson County jail in Kearny to meet with two female detainees from Jamaica. The two actors, whose show tackled issues of immigration detention and family separation in its final season, said they wanted to draw attention to the plight of immigrants in such detention facilities.

“This is our first visit to a detention center and we want to know if they want to talk about it, what their experience is like and how they are feeling,” Martinez said before entering the jail, officially named the Hudson County Correctional and Rehabilitation Center. “The reason we are doing it is we want to help.”

Tarver said in order to contribute to change they needed to educate themselves better about the country’s immigration detention system.

“Part of educating yourself is experiencing it and hearing their stories and seeing it with your eyes,” she said. “It’s the first step for us to get involved and by seeing the place, and seeing the people, I think it will give us a better direction on how our platform can spread awareness.”

The visit was organized by Freedom for Immigrants, an organization that aims to abolish immigration detention and which was featured in the final season of the show, and First Friends of New Jersey and New York, a nonprofit that sends volunteers to visit immigrant detainees held at facilities in both states.

Meeting detainees

The women visited with the detainees for about 30 minutes. The detainees talked about their personal experiences and how they ended up detained. They were accompanied by Victor Salama, the executive director of First Friends of New Jersey and New York, an advocacy group that provides volunteer visitation and resettlement assistance. Rosa Santana, program coordinator for the organization, Stephanie Lopez, volunteer coordinator, and Dania Darwish, northeast regional coordinator for Freedom for Immigrants, also attended.

After leaving the jail, Tarver recounted the story of the Jamaican woman she met. She said the woman was a victim of domestic violence, and when she sought help from the police, her immigration status came into play and she wound up detained. The woman has been held for four months, Tarver said.

"She is stoically hopeful, and I hope that court goes well for her this Tuesday,'' Tarversaid. "Hopefully I could move forward in advocating for their rights."

Martinez also met with a Jamaican woman who has been living in the United States for 30 years, but has been detained for two years. The woman is set to be released in a few weeks, she said.

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Martinez said she was amazed by the woman's positivity.

"She was encouraging me, even though I came to encourage her,'' Martinez said. "She was really grateful for the visit."

Martinez said she was inspired to make similar visits at other facilities in the future and plans to return.

"I'm going to go all over the country and do this, this was the beginning, and here we go,'' she said.

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Volunteers needed

Salama, the executive director of First Friends, said the organization has more than 200 volunteers visiting immigrant detainees at four facilities in the area, but is always seeking more. He said there is a need for volunteers who speak Spanish and other languages, since detainees arrive from various countries. In recent times, he said, area immigration facilities have been receiving people who recently crossed the border from Central America and Cuba.

There are four facilities in New Jersey that house immigrant detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Besides the Hudson jail, they include the Bergen County jail in Hackensack, a private facility in Elizabeth and the Essex County jail in Newark. The county jails house the detainees under agreements with the federal government and charge a fee. Most of the jails make tens of millions of dollars a year from these contracts.

The Orange County Correctional Facility in Goshen, New York, also houses detainees for ICE. First Friends sends volunteers to that site as well.

Fund created to help inmates

"Orange is the New Black" premiered on Netflix in 2013 and centers on life in prison for female inmates. The seventh and final season of the prison comedy-drama debuted last month.

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The show was set in a fictional minimum-security prison in Litchfield, New York, and filmed in the former Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center, in Orangeburg, New York.

At the same time the final season was released, the show's creators launched a fund to support groups pushing for criminal justice reform, as well as programs that help women re-enter society from prison and those that protect immigrants’ rights and end mass incarceration.

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Martinez portrayed the character of Dominga “Daddy” Duarte, a drug-smuggler, while Tarver played Artesian McCullough, a military veteran hired as a corrections officer.

Martinez is also a singer, and appeared and placed third on NBC’s "The Voice" in 2011.

Santana, who helped coordinate the visit and accompanied the actresses, said last year a couple of producers from the show visited the private immigration detention center in Elizabeth, which holds about 300 detainees for ICE.