More New Yorkers Are Stepping Up To Bail Out Detained Immigrants

About eleven years ago Robert, a Caribbean immigrant, was convicted for marijuana possession with intent to sell. He completed three years of probation and thought the incident was behind him. But in 2017, he was leaving home in New Jersey when Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him on his way to work.

“I was like, ‘What is this about?’ because I know I've done nothing wrong,” he recalled. “Until I find out it was the same charge.”

Even though he was a legal resident with a green card, his old, relatively minor drug conviction was considered a “crime of moral turpitude” that made him deportable under U.S. immigration law. Robert was detained at the Essex County Jail. But the drug conviction also meant he wasn’t immediately eligible for bond. Last spring, after two years in detention and an appeal to a federal judge, an immigration judge finally set bail at $20,000. Robert, who asked us not to use his real name as his case is ongoing, said he couldn’t afford that because he’d lost his job while he was locked up.

“I lost my home. I lost the car,” he said. “I lost family because no one came to visit me, and I was just sitting there wondering what next.”

But a few days after the bond was set, Robert got out. An organization called the New York Immigrant Freedom Fund paid the entire $20,000 for him. He’s now living with friends in New Jersey while waiting for his full case to remain in the U.S. is heard by an immigration judge. “There’s no way I could have got out without their help,” he said, of the bond fund.

The Immigrant Freedom Fund technically started last year but is officially launching today. It’s a project of the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, which previously only posted bail for people in criminal court. Now, with the state poised to eliminate cash bail for most offenses starting in January, Brooklyn Community Bail Fund Executive Director Peter Goldberg said the fund will continue to advocate for criminal justice reform. But it’s only going to bond out detained immigrants.

Lee Wang, who directs the Immigrant Freedom Fund, said this is sorely needed because the vast majority of immigrants — like Robert — aren’t eligible for bond during their first six months in detention.

“In the New York-New Jersey area there are thousands of immigrants sitting in detention and on any given day and only 12 percent of those individuals will actually get bond granted by an immigration judge,” Wang explained. “Often the bond amount is so high that it's simply unaffordable for most immigrant families. The average bond about right now is $7,500.”

Nationally, the median bond granted for detained immigrants is $8,000 according to TRAC at Syracuse University, and it’s been climbing since President Trump took office with his hardline policies against immigration. In addition to arresting more undocumented immigrants, the government is now going after many legal immigrants with old criminal convictions, like Robert, who were not considered a priority for deportation by the Obama administration.

In this climate, more organizations have stepped up to help detained immigrants pay bond. There are now more than a dozen around the U.S.

Wang said the New York Immigrant Freedom Fund has raised more than $2 million in the last year to bond out 300 people in the metro region. It’s based on the same philosophy as regular bail funds for people accused of criminal offenses, she said.

“The idea that you have to lock people up to get them to show up for court is just a farce.”

Listen to Beth Fertig's radio report here:

In the Brooklyn fund’s work with criminal defendants, she said 95 percent of those who were bailed out returned to court. With immigrants, the new fund is partnering with six local community groups: African Communities Together, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Families for Freedom, Immigrant Defense Project, Make the Road New York, and Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

These organizations will help the New York Immigrant Freedom Fund locate detained immigrants who need help posting bond, and then provide extra services, including help finding attorneys, food and housing. Those who work with immigrants say this extra support is crucial once they’re out of detention.

The two-drawer file cabinet in Julie Schwietert Collazo’s Long Island City apartment is stuffed with paperwork for migrants she’s helped bond out of detention. She co-founded Immigrant Families Together in June of 2018 after hearing a report on WNYC about a Guatemalan mom who was separated at the border from her three children, because they’d been sent to foster care in New York City.

Through a grassroots campaign, Immigrant Families Together raised the full $7,500 needed to get Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia out of detention in Arizona. Since then, Schwietert Collazo said the group has raised about $2 million more to pay the bonds for 83 other migrants who were separated from family members at the border. Some bonds were as high as $30,000. She said they get calls and letters all the time from detained immigrants, but “our specific focus is on separations that happen as a result of detention at the border,” a practice that continued after the zero tolerance policy stopped last year.

Immigrant Families Together also helps migrants get settled after they’re released.

“I would say the majority of them come out and they have family members in the United States who they’re going to live with,” she said.

But others need help paying the rent, or buying groceries while waiting to go to immigration court — a process that can take up to a year or longer. Volunteers, including Schweitert Collazo, have even hosted some families temporarily. She’s made room for them in her living room and in her three children’s bedroom, which also houses a pet chinchilla. Her husband is a Cuban immigrant and they speak Spanish with the families and provide other comforts.

“We typically keep a bunch of extra toiletries in here,” she said, pointing to a bathroom drawer filled with small tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes and sanitary pads.

Schwietert Collazo acknowledges four of the migrants bonded out by Immigrant Families Together didn’t return to court, putting her fund at risk. Like other bail funds, it’s a revolving door type of program. Once an immigrant’s court case is completed, the bond is returned and used to pay for someone else. Nor are the chances of winning asylum very good these days. The first mother her group bonded out, Gonzalez-Garcia, lost her asylum case last month. She’s now living in North Carolina and plans to appeal.

Nonetheless, Schwietert Collazo said she hasn’t lost her commitment to the fund and its support services for migrants seeking a chance to stay in the U.S. On a recent visit to her apartment, she was on the phone with the Department of Education helping a family that settled in New York enroll their child in pre-K.

“These are all sort of longer term commitments,” she said. “They're really essential for somebody’s well-being, but also, you know, ultimately their chance to proceed through asylum claims in the most stable way possible.”

Beth Fertig is a senior reporter covering courts and legal affairs at WNYC. You can follow her on Twitter at @bethfertig.