An Expensive Pass to Freedom: Bond Amounts Trajectories in Immigration Court

Abstract

Thousands of immigrants are in civil detention awaiting case adjudication in the United States. Unguaranteed legal representation and stringent access to bond hearings restrict the chances of release. Though the institutional purpose of civil detention and bonds in Immigration Court is to secure safety and the public good, we find contradictions in such purpose: increasingly high bonds are mandated regardless of individual circumstances, in a context of legal violence, or the loss and uncertainty experienced by a subclass of individuals scrutinized by the law, characterized by heightened criminalization, scarce legal protections, and broad judicial discretion. We use bond case administrative data from the Executive Office of Immigration Review between 1991 and 2020 in a multivariate analysis that centers on the influence of criminal records and legal representation to get lower bond amounts granted. We find that criminal records predict risk before 2001, but after, individuals with no records are also mandated to pay higher amounts to Immigration Courts. After 2001, legal representation’s influence on reducing bond amounts is subtle but relevant. We analyze these findings in light of policy changes and provide evidence on how increasingly high bonds fracture social and economic determinants of immigrants’ well-being by altering their economic stability while they and their communities also suffer the psychological and physical tolls of detention.