The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Bail fund formed
Expectation is that city will become ICE target
NEW HAVEN >> An undocumented immigrant from Massachusetts has been freed from more than nine months of detention with the help of the newly formed Immigrant Bail Fund in New Haven.
The bail fund is affiliated with the Connecticut Bail Fund, which was formed last year by a group from Yale University. The mission of both funds is to put up bail for those who cannot afford it and so are forced to sit in jail before they are even given a hearing.
Juanita (not her real name), who came to the United States more than 20 years ago from the Dominican Republic, has mental health issues, according to Joseph Meyers, a law student intern with the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, who is among those representing the woman.
At Juanita’s bond hearing in December, after she had already served six months in detention at the Suffolk County House of Corrections, “the judge was so sympathetic that he gave her the lowest possible bond” of $1,500, Meyers said, but even that was unaffordable. Finally, the Immigrant Bail Fund came through with the money.
“She’s not a flight risk. We bailed her out and she was reunited with her family,” said Brett Davidson, a 2016 Yale graduate and director of both bail funds.
Davidson said that detained immigrants can wait up to six months before they get a deportation hearing, but that federal courts have ruled they must be given a hearing after that time.
“If you’re detained, you’re much more likely to be deported than if you’re released on bail,” he said.
Undocumented immigrants — those who have not entered the country legally — have become especially anxious since President Donald Trump has vowed to increase deportations. While putting up bail does not stop deportation proceedings, it allows the immigrants to return to their families and jobs and to access legal counsel while awaiting a hearing.
Meyers would not confirm Juanita’s immigration status, but her case is discussed by another of her lawyers, My Khanh Ngo, on a blog at feministing.com. Meyers said it’s not only undocumented immigrants who are subject to deportation proceedings. Those who have gained permanent resident status also may be picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for committing even a minor infraction such as a traffic ticket. Also, “immigration judges have a huge amount of discretion when they’re setting the bonds,” Meyers said. “The judge typically won’t consider whether an individual is personally financially able to make the bond amount.” In Juanita’s case, even $1,500 “was completely unreachable,” he said.
“It was a difficult process,” said John Lugo of Unidad Latina en Acción, one of the bail fund’s partners, along with the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, Junta for Progressive Action and others. “I tried to raise money and then tried to convince people to do it. We feel like there is a need to create this fund. In immigration you have to pay the total amount in cash. You don’t have the right to use a bondsman. The burden on the immigrant communities is higher.”
Jesus Morales Sanchez, statewide organizer for the Connecticut Immigrant Rights Alliance, said city residents are nervous about ICE raids under Trump’s administration, and remember raids on June 6, 2007, in which more than 30 people were detained.
“The experience in 2007 taught us a lesson that we need to be ready,” he said. “I think Connecticut can be a target” because of the proimmigrant positions held by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the presence of sanctuary cities like New Haven. “We know that at some point, Connecticut is going to be on the hit list.”
“With this threat about raids in the community, we’re working on an emergency basis just in case something happens,” Lugo said. “We feel this bail fund is a need for the community.”
So far, the Immigrant Bail Fund has raised more than $13,400, but Lugo said, “It’s nothing. I will be happy when I see $100,000 in that bail fund. One bond can be $25,000.”
That was the bail set for Mark Reid, a native of Jamaica, a legal permanent resident and an Army veteran who served 16 months in detention under threat of deportation. He had served time for drug charges, then was turned over to ICE. He was released from detention in 2014 after raising $25,000 from area groups, churches and friends.
“We need a good strong bail fund,” said Edgar Sandoval of Unidad Latina en Acción. “But people are still afraid because you have to go to work and take the buses,” potentially exposing themselves to ICE agents. “To know that we have help from the bail fund is helping us be a little more peaceful on the streets.
“We cannot just be inside home doing nothing, because we have to pay bills, so this gives us a little freedom,” Sandoval said.
Meanwhile, the Connecticut Bail Fund has bailed out 14 people from pretrial detention since its founding last year, Davidson said. He said the average time that those arrested spend waiting for their court hearing is 54 days, long enough to lose jobs and housing and to seriously disrupt family life. While bail may be less than $3,000, those who can’t afford it may plead guilty in order to get out of jail, Davidson said.
“With the Connecticut Bail Fund, we already see good results with affecting case outcomes,” Davidson said. “A couple of weeks ago, I put up $100 for someone” who was 26 years old and had had a fight with his mother. “The next court date, 10 days later, they dropped the case.
“The people that we’ve bailed out, four of them have had their cases resolved, so we’ve gotten that money back,” Davidson said.
“While the ostensible purpose of bail is to incentivize a court appearance … the actual purpose is often to keep people detained through prohibitively high bail amounts,” he said. “The message is clear that bail functions to criminalize people just because they can’t pay.”