With ICE detaining record numbers of people, immigration attorney Charles Kuck’s message is to prepare before, not after. Whether you can even ask for a bond depends heavily on where you are detained.
mic What the Attorney Says
“If you live in the 11th circuit where I live, which is Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, you can file for bond. But if you live in the fifth circuit, and if you’re undocumented, you can’t.”
Two categories are shut out of bond regardless of geography. Anyone with a removal order is not getting one, and an “arriving alien” (someone not paroled or admitted and here only a short time) generally cannot get bond either.
mic What the Attorney Says
“You have a removal order, you’re not getting a bond. If you’re an arriving alien, that means you were not paroled or admitted to the United States and it’s within the last couple years, you’re not getting bond. But if you’ve been here a while, more than two years, you should be eligible for bond.”
For everyone who is bond-eligible, the case is won on documents, and Kuck’s clinic gives detained families a checklist: the A-number, entry and immigration history, certified copies of any arrest or conviction records, a birth certificate, passport, proof of how long you have lived here, letters of support, medical records showing family hardship, and papers for any U.S.-citizen children, military service, home, car, or business. The point is to have all of it ready in advance.
mic What the Attorney Says
“These documents should be sitting in a folder that you can hand to the lawyer the day the person is detained.”
Speed is the whole game: the faster a bond request reaches an immigration judge, the faster someone gets a hearing instead of sitting in detention while the case grinds on. This is the flip side of avoiding the encounter in the first place, the same reason to know who can safely fly domestically during ICE activity and to plan for detention exposure once TPS or status lapses. If a spouse with a pending case is picked up, the collateral-relief timing in the detained-spouse I-130 situation becomes urgent fast.