This guide provides strategies for practitioners seeking a client’s release from immigration detention. It focuses on the nuts and bolts of preparing for and representing a client during immigration court bond hearings. It also provides an overview of the immigration detention system, discusses the legal authority for different types of immigration detention, and covers the process for appealing a bond decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Accompanying this guide are sample materials provided by practitioners that may be of use in preparing bond cases.

In January 2017, the University of Maryland Carey School of Law Immigration Clinic, Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition’s, or MIRC, and CLINIC commenced a bond observation project at the Baltimore Immigration Court with the goal of learning if and how immigration judge practices and decisions evolved under the Trump Administration. This report represents a localized, quantitative perspective on those changes and includes analysis of the first set of these observations, collected from Jan. 24, 2017, to Aug. 21, 2017.

Stanford Law School Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, University of California Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic, and CLINIC’s Defending Vulnerable Populations Program collaborated on this factsheet summarizing how foreign nationals who have bonded out of ICE detention may reclaim their immigration bond money. This factsheet is based off of CLINIC’s article, “Immigration Bond: How to Get Your Money Back.”

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, continues to enforce immigration laws and more immigrants are subject to immigration detention.