In the first few months of the Trump administration, the number of arrests of undocumented immigrants without criminal records jumped by 150 percent.
People arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — get sent to detention facilities or prisons across the country to await their court proceedings. Some are eligible for release on bond, but the median amount is $6,500. About one in five detainees eligible for bond can’t afford it, so they might remain under custody for weeks, months, sometimes years at a time.
In Connecticut, a nonprofit called the Immigrant Bail Fund has started posting partial or whole bond amounts for detained people. Here & Now‘s Phoebe Petrovic (@phoebepetrovic) has the story of one couple the fund bailed out.
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