Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States. DWN was founded in 1997 by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in response to the rapid growth of the immigration detention system in the United States, as a result of the immigration laws passed by Congress in 1996.