The Rules Just Changed — Quietly
Your family member has been picked up by ICE in the interior of the country. Six months ago, under the rules that applied for most of the last thirty years, they would likely have appeared before an immigration judge within a few weeks for a bond hearing. Many people in their situation would have been released on bond while their removal case moved forward.
Today, they may not have a bond hearing at all. The immigration judge may no longer have the authority to give them one. The rules that seemed settled six months ago are not the rules that apply to their case now.
This article is about how that happened, what the courts are doing about it, and — for the people who still qualify for bond — how the process actually works. It is not a prediction piece. The law is moving, and it will continue to move through the Supreme Court over the coming year or two. What follows is the landscape as it stands in late summer 2026, with enough history to make the current situation legible and enough forward-looking framing to help families and their counsel understand what comes next.
Two Kinds of Detention, Two Legal Frameworks
Every conversation about immigration detention begins with the same structural question: which statute governs the detention? The answer determines whether the person is entitled to a bond hearing, how long they can be held without individualized review, and what options their attorney can pursue.
Two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act do the primary work. INA § 236 (8 U.S.C. § 1226) is the general authority for arresting and detaining people already inside the United States while their removal cases proceed. Under § 236(a), the default rule is that a detained non-citizen is entitled to a bond hearing before an immigration judge. The judge decides whether the person is a flight risk or a danger to the community and sets a bond amount that allows release pending removal proceedings. Under § 236(c), people who fall within specified criminal categories are subject to mandatory detention with no bond hearing by statute. In January 2025, the Laken Riley Act (Pub. L. 119-1) expanded those categories dramatically for inadmissible non-citizens: an arrest or charge — not a conviction — for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or a crime causing death or serious bodily injury now triggers mandatory detention.
INA § 235(b) (8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)) governs detention of people treated as “applicants for admission” — people who, in the eyes of the law, are not yet “in” the country regardless of where they are physically located. Detention under § 235(b) does not include a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Release authority, such as it is, rests with the Department of Homeland Security, typically through the separate mechanism of parole.
The pivot point — the question that this entire article is built around — is which framework applies to a person who entered the United States without inspection but has been living in the interior, often for years or decades. For most of the last thirty years, the operating assumption was that such a person fell under § 236(a) once they were apprehended, and was therefore entitled to a bond hearing. That operating assumption is what the Department of Homeland Security set aside in 2025.
A Short History of Immigration Detention in the United States
The current dispute is not a fight over what the statute says. The statute is what it has been since 1996. The fight is over how the executive chooses to use the authority the statute provides, and over what the Constitution requires when the executive’s choice changes. Understanding the history clarifies the current situation.
Before IIRIRA
Immigration detention has existed in some form since the earliest days of federal immigration enforcement. For most of the twentieth century, however, it was limited and discretionary. Bond hearings before an immigration judge were the norm for people placed in deportation proceedings. Congress had not created the broad mandatory-detention categories that define the current framework. The executive detained comparatively few people, and those it did detain generally had individualized review.
IIRIRA 1996: The Statutory Framework That Still Governs
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 — known in immigration practice as IIRIRA — rewrote the detention framework into the structure we still have today. Section 236(c) created mandatory detention for a defined set of criminal categories, requiring the executive to detain certain non-citizens during removal proceedings without the possibility of bond. Section 235(b) gave DHS (then the Immigration and Naturalization Service) broad detention authority over applicants for admission. Section 241(a)(6) — codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1231 — addressed detention of people with final orders of removal who could not immediately be removed.
Congress gave the executive a set of tools. What each administration chose to do with those tools was a policy question that had nothing to do with the statutory text.
The Forbearance Era: Clinton Through Biden
From the Clinton administration through the Biden administration, administrations of both parties generally did not extend § 235(b) classification to long-resident people who had entered without inspection (in practice shorthand: ‘EWIs’) and were apprehended in the interior. Long-term unadmitted residents were processed under § 236(a) and received bond hearings. This was not a judicial requirement. It was a series of policy choices, repeated across four administrations and thirty years, that produced what practitioners, judges, and affected families reasonably took as settled practice.
The forbearance was not universal. Border apprehensions and recent arrivals were treated differently. But for the long-term resident who had built a life in the United States — the parent with U.S. citizen children, the worker with decades of employment, the person whose only immigration violation was the manner of their original entry — the practice was bond hearings under § 236(a). That expectation is what changed in 2025.
Zadvydas v. Davis (2001)
In Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court addressed what happens when a non-citizen with a final order of removal cannot actually be removed — because the receiving country will not accept them, or because removal is otherwise not reasonably foreseeable. The Court read a six-month reasonable-time limit into § 241(a)(6), holding that after that period, continued detention requires the government to show that removal is still significantly likely in the foreseeable future. The constitutional principle underlying the decision — that civil immigration detention cannot be indefinite without meaningful review — has carried forward into every subsequent case in this area.
Demore v. Kim (2003)
Two years later, in Demore v. Kim, the Court upheld mandatory detention under § 236(c) against a facial due process challenge. The petitioner was a lawful permanent resident detained without bond during his removal proceedings based on a criminal conviction. The Court held that mandatory detention for the “brief” and “definite” period of removal proceedings did not violate due process. Importantly, the Court left open as-applied challenges to prolonged § 236(c) detention — the question of what happens when the “brief” period stretches into months or years. That open question has driven most of the litigation that followed.
Jennings v. Rodriguez (2018)
In Jennings v. Rodriguez, the Supreme Court closed the statutory argument for periodic bond hearings during prolonged detention. The Ninth Circuit had read a six-month statutory right to bond hearings into the detention statutes; the Supreme Court reversed, holding the statutes did not require periodic bond hearings as a matter of text. The Court expressly left open the question of whether the Due Process Clause itself required such hearings. The fight over prolonged detention moved, from that point forward, from statutory interpretation to constitutional law.
Arteaga-Martinez and Aleman Gonzalez (2022)
In 2022, the Court decided two related cases that closed further procedural doors. Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez held that § 1231(a)(6) — the post-final-order detention statute — does not itself require a bond hearing after prolonged detention. Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez held that 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1) bars federal courts from issuing class-wide injunctions against the federal government in this area, requiring detainees to litigate individually. By the end of 2022, the statutory pathways to mandatory bond hearings were largely closed. The remaining route to relief was individual habeas petitions asserting as-applied due process violations.
The Through-Line
Three decades of statutory and constitutional litigation produced a legal framework that can be summarized in one sentence: Congress gave the executive sweeping detention authority in 1996, the Supreme Court has consistently read the statutes the way they are written, and anyone looking for a bond-hearing guarantee has to ground the claim in the Due Process Clause rather than in the text of the INA. The forbearance of four successive administrations made the harshness of that framework less visible. When the forbearance ended, the framework did not change — but its effects became immediate.
What Changed in 2025
The Lyons Memo
On July 8, 2025, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons issued interim guidance concluding that § 235 — not § 236 — is the correct detention authority for all “applicants for admission,” a category the memo now reads to include anyone present in the United States without admission, regardless of how long they have lived in the interior. The guidance memo reversed the operating assumption of three decades. Under its framework, a person who entered without inspection in 2003, built a life in Montana, raised U.S. citizen children, and has no criminal record, is — when apprehended by ICE — classified as an applicant for admission under § 235(b) rather than as a § 236(a) respondent entitled to a bond hearing.
The memo itself is framed as a correction: DHS concluded that the agency’s prior legal position was wrong, that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A)’s reference to “any alien who is an applicant for admission” does not carve out length of presence, and that the agency should detain under the authority the statute actually provides. The American Immigration Council has published a detailed practice advisory on the implications.
The Three BIA Decisions of 2025
The Board of Immigration Appeals bracketed the Lyons memo with precedent decisions. Matter of Q. Li came first, in May 2025; two more followed in September 2025, translating the policy position into binding adjudicative law for immigration judges.
Matter of Q. Li, 29 I&N Dec. 66 (BIA 2025), held that non-citizens apprehended without a warrant while arriving in the United States are held under § 235(b). Matter of Dobrotvorskii, 29 I&N Dec. 211 (BIA 2025), tightened the standards inside bond hearings themselves, holding that sponsor evidence bears on flight risk and vacating an immigration judge’s grant of bond on that record. Matter of Yajure-Hurtado, 29 I&N Dec. 216 (BIA 2025), delivered the decisive holding: immigration judges lack authority to conduct bond hearings for anyone present in the United States without admission, regardless of how long they have been here.
The Yajure-Hurtado petitioner had entered the United States without inspection in November 2022, received Temporary Protected Status in 2024, saw that TPS expire in April 2025, and was apprehended by DHS shortly after. The BIA’s reasoning tracks the statutory text: the petitioner was never formally admitted, therefore he is an applicant for admission, therefore he falls under § 235(b), therefore the immigration judge has no statutory authority to hold a bond hearing. The full decision is available through the Department of Justice’s EOIR media site.
What This Looks Like in the Courtroom
In practice, a person detained after the Lyons memo takes effect may appear before an immigration judge, ask for a bond hearing, and hear the judge say: “I have no authority to give you one.” The judge is not being unsympathetic. Under the BIA’s precedent decisions, the judge’s statutory authority has been removed. The person’s family may have the financial resources to post bond and the documentation to establish community ties, but the procedure in which that evidence would be weighed no longer exists in immigration court for this population.
The only remaining administrative mechanism is parole under § 235(b), which is discretionary with DHS and which the current administration grants sparingly. The remaining judicial mechanism is a petition for writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. That is where the real fight has moved.
The Circuit Split
Two distinct legal questions are currently moving through the federal appellate courts. Readers should keep them separate because they involve different populations and different legal arguments.
The first question is whether ICE and the BIA are correctly reading § 235(b) to reach interior-arrested people who entered without inspection. This is the new § 235(b) reclassification question, and it is the one generated by the 2025 policy shift.
The second question is whether the Due Process Clause requires individualized bond review for people subject to prolonged mandatory detention under § 236(c). This is the older § 236(c) prolonged-detention question. It has been splitting circuits since Jennings, and it predates the 2025 changes.
The § 235(b) Reclassification Cases: Buenrostro-Mendez and Herrera Avila
On February 6, 2026, the Fifth Circuit decided Buenrostro-Mendez, becoming the first federal appeals court to uphold the 2025 ICE policy. The court read the text of § 235(b)(2)(A) as controlling and concluded that ICE has the statutory authority to classify interior-arrested unadmitted persons as applicants for admission. The length of their residence in the United States, the court held, does not change the statutory classification.
On March 25, 2026, the Eighth Circuit reached the same conclusion in Herrera Avila v. Bondi, over a dissent; the full court declined to rehear the case in June 2026. Two circuits have now aligned with the government on the statutory question. On July 30, 2026, the Ninth Circuit — which covers Montana — decided Rodriguez Vazquez v. Bostock, holding that people who entered without inspection and are apprehended in the interior are not subject to mandatory detention under § 235(b)(2)(A); their detention is governed by § 236(a), which allows a bond hearing. The First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have reached the same conclusion — the Seventh in Rojas v. Olson on July 30, 2026, the First in Guerrero Orellana v. Moniz on August 13, 2026, and the Third in Buele Morocho v. Warden Philadelphia FDC on August 28, 2026 — and as of August 30, 2026, the Fourth Circuit has heard argument and not yet ruled.
The § 236(c) Due Process Line: Banyee v. Garland
In September 2024 — before the 2025 policy shift but addressing the related constitutional question — the Eighth Circuit decided Banyee v. Garland. Nyynkpao Banyee was admitted to the United States as a refugee from Côte d’Ivoire in 2004, when he was six years old. As an adult, he was convicted of drug-possession, theft, and armed-robbery offenses. He was placed in removal proceedings under § 236(c) mandatory detention and held for more than twelve months without any individualized review.
The federal district court granted his habeas petition and ordered that he receive a bond hearing. The immigration judge held that hearing, found that the government had not met its burden of justifying continued detention, and released Banyee on bond. The Eighth Circuit later reversed on the legal question. In a decision critiqued at length by the Harvard Law Review, the Eighth Circuit held that the Due Process Clause does not require a bond hearing for non-citizens subject to prolonged mandatory detention under § 236(c) so long as deportation remains a realistic possibility. After Banyee’s removal order became final, he was detained again — this time under a different statute, § 1231(a), which governs detention after a final order of removal.
Banyee is the constitutional companion to Buenrostro-Mendez and Herrera Avila. Two circuits — most aggressively the Eighth — have now rejected both the statutory and the constitutional arguments for bond hearings in these contexts. Other circuits have not reached these conclusions.
Habeas Corpus and the Role of District Courts
While the appellate picture trends one direction, more than three hundred federal judges across the country — appointed by presidents of both parties — have ruled against the ICE reclassification policy in over 1,600 individual habeas cases. The mechanism matters. A habeas petition is an individual proceeding, not a class action. It produces relief for the specific petitioner. Aleman Gonzalez forecloses class-wide injunctions, so each detainee’s lawyer files their own habeas case in the district court covering the place of detention.
In the Ninth Circuit, district court rulings had generally ordered bond hearings for petitioners challenging § 235(b) classification even before the appellate court ruled. For a person detained in the Ninth Circuit — including anyone held in or transferred from Montana — Rodriguez Vazquez means the immigration judge’s bond authority under § 236(a) is restored while the decision stands. The government may seek rehearing en banc or Supreme Court review, so this is a live front, not a settled one.
The February 2026 Vacatur of Yajure-Hurtado
On February 18, 2026, a federal district court vacated the BIA’s Yajure-Hurtado decision under the Administrative Procedure Act and ordered class-wide notice to potentially affected detainees. The ruling was grounded in APA procedural grounds rather than in the merits of the statutory question, but it is a significant counterweight at the class level. The district court in the same litigation had already vacated the underlying DHS policy classwide on December 18, 2025. In March 2026 the Ninth Circuit stayed that judgment’s effect outside the Central District of California while the government’s appeal proceeds, so the policy’s operative force now varies by where a person is detained. The circuit court rulings upholding the policy remain controlling within their respective jurisdictions. But the BIA’s precedent decision is no longer binding on immigration judges in the same way it was before the vacatur, and the notice requirement has given thousands of detained people information about the habeas route that they did not previously have.
How the Two Sides Reason
The courts that have upheld the ICE policy rely primarily on statutory text. Section 235(b)(2)(A) applies to “any alien” who is an applicant for admission. A person who entered without inspection was never admitted. The text does not carve out a length-of-presence exception. Three decades of agency practice treating long-term residents under § 236(a) was a policy choice, not a statutory compulsion, and policy choices can be revisited. On this view, the Lyons memo is not a legal revolution — it is the agency applying the statute as written, perhaps for the first time in a long while.
The courts that have granted habeas petitions and ordered bond hearings reason differently. They combine three threads. First, statutory-text arguments that § 235(b) was not designed to reach people living in the interior for years and that the government’s reading produces results Congress did not intend. Second, procedural due process concerns about prolonged civil detention without individualized review — Zadvydas’s principle that such detention raises serious constitutional problems when it stretches beyond what the statute’s purpose requires. Third, in some cases, a reliance-and-notice argument: decades of consistent agency practice created settled expectations, and changing that practice to reach people with deep ties to the United States, without procedural review, puts the new policy in constitutional tension with basic fairness principles.
Neither side is making up new law. Both are applying real legal principles to the same facts and reaching different conclusions. That is what a genuine circuit split looks like.
Where This Is Headed
The Supreme Court has already stepped into the adjacent fight: on June 15, 2026, it granted certiorari in Genalo v. Black to decide whether due process requires a bond hearing when mandatory detention under § 236(c) becomes prolonged, and what burden of proof applies. On the § 235(b) reclassification question, the government petitioned for certiorari on June 22, 2026 from its Sixth Circuit loss; a grant on that question, too, is widely expected given the depth of the circuit split. Two federal circuits have aligned with the government. Hundreds of federal district courts have ruled the other way. Tens of thousands of people are in active detention pending the answer — ICE’s daily detained population in fiscal 2026 is the highest ever recorded. The conditions for a cert grant are all present: a clean circuit split, a question of national importance, and an active administrative policy whose scope turns on the answer.
The statutory-text case for the government is that § 235(b)(2)(A) by its terms reaches any applicant for admission. An EWI was never admitted. The text does not carve out length of residence. On this view, the Lyons memo and the Fifth and Eighth Circuits are reading the statute the way it was written, and Congress, if it wanted a different rule, could legislate one.
The due process case against the government draws on Zadvydas and its successors. Prolonged civil detention without individualized review raises serious constitutional concerns. Three decades of consistent agency practice created settled expectations that long-term residents with families and ties in the United States would receive bond hearings under § 236(a). Sweeping that practice aside, without process, for people with deep roots in the country, puts the new policy in tension with fundamental principles about when the government may hold a person in detention.
This article will not predict the outcome. The statutory arguments and the constitutional arguments are both real, and the Court could resolve the case in several ways: accepting the statutory argument and leaving due process questions for future as-applied cases, rejecting the statutory argument, ruling narrowly on procedural grounds, or some combination. What matters to any individual detained person is less which way the Court rules and more what their representation does today — whether they pursue a habeas petition, whether they qualify for relief from removal on the merits, whether they can post bond if ordered released. The broader legal landscape will clarify over the coming year or two. Decisions made in detained removal proceedings in the meantime will stand regardless.
Bond Mechanics for People Who Still Qualify
The 2025 policy shift removed bond-hearing access from a large population, but it did not eliminate the bond system. Lawful permanent residents processed under § 236(a) still receive bond hearings. People admitted on non-immigrant visas whose status is later at issue are generally processed under § 236(a). Petitioners who prevail on individual habeas petitions and obtain bond-hearing orders still need to navigate the bond system. And even within the § 235(b) population, parole granted by DHS operates on a similar logistical framework for release.
The rest of this section is about what the bond system actually looks like in 2026 — how to find a detained person, how bond amounts work, and how to pay.
Finding the Detained Person: The ICE Detainee Locator
Before any bond conversation can happen, families need to know where the person is physically held. ICE’s online detainee locator is the primary public tool. The locator accepts two kinds of searches: by A-number (the seven-to-nine-digit alien registration number, written with an A prefix; the locator requires nine digits, so add leading zeros to a shorter number), or by biographical information including name, country of birth, and date of birth.
The locator has a well-known limitation. In the first hours after an apprehension, and during transfers between facilities, the person sometimes does not appear in the system. ICE continually moves detained people to wherever bed space is available — sometimes across state lines — so a person’s location can change with little notice, and the locator database can lag behind those transfers by hours or occasionally days. In current practice, most people detained in Montana end up at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington: DHS administers Montana from the west, with CBP operating out of Seattle and the USCIS field office out of Spokane. A person who appears in the locator today may not appear tomorrow, and a person who did not appear yesterday may appear today. Families who check and see no result should check again on a regular schedule. It is not uncommon for someone to “disappear” from the locator briefly during a transfer and reappear at the new facility.
When the person cannot be located after persistent checking, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) field office for the region where the apprehension occurred can usually confirm custody if approached by counsel. Family members without an attorney have a harder time getting that information. This is one of the reasons early engagement with counsel matters.
Who Qualifies for Bond Today
Eligibility turns on which detention statute applies. People processed under § 236(a) are entitled to a bond hearing. People processed under § 236(c) are subject to mandatory detention during proceedings based on specific criminal categories — the full analysis of those categories is set out in our overview at the link below. Since January 2025, the Laken Riley Act has extended mandatory detention to inadmissible non-citizens who are merely arrested for or charged with theft-type offenses and certain assaults — no conviction required. People classified under § 235(b) under the 2025 policy do not receive bond hearings in immigration court; their path to release, if any, runs through DHS parole or federal habeas litigation.
The criminal categories that trigger § 236(c) mandatory detention are not intuitive, and the analysis of whether a particular conviction fits requires careful work. Our overview of criminal convictions and immigration status walks through the four major grounds — aggravated felonies, crimes involving moral turpitude, drug offenses, and the domestic-violence and firearms grounds — and explains how each interacts with mandatory detention.
How Bond Amounts Work
The statutory minimum bond under § 236(a)(2)(A) is $1,500. Actual amounts set by immigration judges vary widely — from the minimum for low-risk cases with strong community ties, to tens of thousands of dollars for cases where the judge weighs flight risk or danger more heavily. The factors the judge considers include the person’s immigration history, criminal record, family ties in the United States, employment, length of residence, and the strength of their underlying relief claim.
A bond set by the immigration judge can be challenged on appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but the appeal does not stay the original bond amount — if the family can post the amount the judge set, release happens at the posted amount regardless of the appeal. The exception runs the other way: when DHS appeals an immigration judge’s decision to grant or lower bond, regulations let the government invoke an automatic stay that blocks release while its appeal is decided. Bond appeals are more commonly used when the immigration judge has denied bond altogether or set an amount too high for any realistic posting.
How to Pay a Bond
Bond payment has changed substantially in recent years. ICE moved bond posting online through its electronic system, CeBONDS, which became the standard method for processing bond payments in April 2023. The system allows prospective obligors to create an account online, verify their identity, upload supporting documentation, electronically complete Form I-352 (the Immigration Bond), and then pay the bond through Fedwire or ACH at their bank. CeBONDS is available only to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, certain nonprofit organizations, and law firms — those are the categories the system recognizes as qualified obligors.
In-person posting at an ICE ERO office is now handled case by case rather than as a standing alternative — and even an obligor who walks in must have access to banking services, because payment moves by Fedwire or ACH rather than cash. Posting hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the time zone where the detainee is held. Processing the bond typically takes one to two hours, and release typically occurs by the end of the same day.
One practical point worth emphasizing. Families often assume that bond must be posted at the facility where the person is physically detained, which can mean traveling hundreds of miles or across state lines. That is not the case. Bond can be posted at any ICE ERO office with bond acceptance capacity, and — increasingly, through CeBONDS — from anywhere with a bank account and an internet connection. What the family needs to begin is the detainee’s A-number. The location of the family and the location of the detainee are two separate questions.
The Obligor: Who Posts the Bond and What They Take On
The person who posts the bond becomes the obligor under Form I-352. The obligor takes on contractual and legal responsibility for the detainee’s appearance at every future proceeding — every hearing, every check-in, every scheduled event in the case. If the person fails to appear or absconds, the bond is forfeited and the obligor loses the entire amount. The obligation does not end until the case concludes — whether through a grant of relief, an order of removal that is executed, voluntary departure that is completed, or other final disposition.
When the case concludes without breach, the obligor is entitled to the return of the bond principal. This can take months or, more commonly, years. For bonds posted through CeBONDS, notices and the refund process run through the obligor’s online account; for older paper bonds, the obligor must produce the original receipt issued at posting. Either way, keep every bond document for the duration of proceedings.
Surety Bonds Through Certified Companies
When the full bond amount is out of reach for the family, the traditional alternative is a surety bond through a company on the Treasury Department’s list of certified surety companies. The surety company posts the bond on the detainee’s behalf in exchange for a nonrefundable premium — a percentage of the bond’s face amount that varies by company — plus collateral. The premium is not refundable when the case concludes. It is the cost of the service. These companies price for risk much the way subprime lenders do — expect terms closer to a high-risk loan than a bank rate, and read the contract carefully before signing. The underlying bond is returned to the surety company, which has its own internal processes for handling collateral and final reconciliation with the family.
Surety arrangements are a legitimate option, but the family should understand what they are purchasing. The premium, unlike the bond principal itself, is money that does not come back. For some families that cost is the only way to secure release; for others it is worth waiting and posting the principal directly if funds can be gathered. Bond, ultimately, is a means to an end — release while the underlying case is litigated — and for many detained clients that case will rest on protection claims; our guide to withholding of removal in the Ninth Circuit explains the standard the immigration judge will ultimately apply.
Pay-As-You-Go Bond Financing: A Warning
For families without the capital for a full bond and without the credit or collateral to qualify for a traditional surety arrangement, a third option has existed for years: pay-as-you-go bond companies. The mechanics vary, but the core model is consistent. The company pays the bond. The person is released. The family pays the company a monthly fee going forward — sometimes for years — until the case concludes or the contract is otherwise terminated. The appeal of these arrangements is obvious: release now, payment over time, without requiring the large lump sum that a bond or a traditional surety premium demands.
For much of the last decade, the dominant company in this space was Libre by Nexus, a subsidiary of Nexus Services, Inc. The Libre business model combined bond payment with GPS ankle monitoring. The company would pay the bond, attach a GPS ankle monitor to the released person, and charge a monthly fee — often several hundred dollars — for the monitoring service and for bond maintenance. Many of those monthly payments did not reduce the underlying bond obligation. Clients paid for years without amortizing the debt.
In April 2024, following coordinated action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and a multistate coalition led by the New York Attorney General, a federal court entered an $811 million judgment against Libre by Nexus, Nexus Services, and its principals. The judgment required $231 million in consumer restitution and imposed $580 million in civil penalties to the CFPB and participating states. The complaints and the judgment document the business practices alleged by the plaintiffs: fees charged above the face value of the bonds, ankle monitors that caused physical pain and injury, and contract terms that made long-term payment obligations difficult to exit. A July 2020 settlement with the California Department of Insurance, valued at roughly $5.5 million, had required the company to stop transacting immigration bonds in California and phase out its GPS ankle monitors there, but it did not resolve the broader business-practice complaints that produced the 2024 judgment.
Libre by Nexus is the most prominent cautionary tale, but it is not the only company in the pay-as-you-go space, and the market continues to evolve. Families considering any pay-as-you-go arrangement should work through a concrete set of questions before signing.
What is the total projected cost over the expected length of removal proceedings, given how long similar cases are currently taking in the relevant immigration court? How much of each monthly payment reduces the bond obligation, versus paying for monitoring services or administrative fees? Is an ankle monitor required as a condition of the arrangement, and what are the terms governing malfunctions, replacements, or charging requirements that interfere with daily life? What are the terms for early cancellation? Is the company named in any active state attorney general action, CFPB proceeding, or federal class-action litigation? The answers to those questions separate responsible arrangements from predatory ones.
A future companion article on this site will treat Libre by Nexus and other pay-as-you-go options in depth, including a practical framework for evaluating individual contracts and a catalog of the current active companies in the space. For the purposes of the article you are reading now, the point is narrower: pay-as-you-go is a real option for families without the capital for a full bond, and it is also a space with documented predatory conduct that has cost clients hundreds of millions of dollars. Approach any such arrangement with open eyes.
What Families Should Gather Before Calling Counsel
A short practical list. The faster an attorney can get a complete picture, the faster the family can move toward whatever outcome is available.
- The detainee’s full legal name, date of birth, and country of citizenship.
- The detainee’s A-number — the seven-to-nine-digit alien registration number beginning with an A; the ICE locator requires nine digits, so add leading zeros to a shorter number. It may appear on prior immigration correspondence, I-94 admission records, work permits, or green cards. Any of those documents is useful.
- The last known place of apprehension and any information about the current detention facility. The ICE detainee locator is the starting point; calls to the ERO field office may be necessary when the locator is not current.
- Immigration history: any prior entries to the United States, applications filed with USCIS or the immigration courts, grants or denials of relief, any prior removal orders, any active removal proceedings.
- Criminal history, including traffic matters, misdemeanors, and deferred or diverted dispositions. Older matters from other states or from the country of origin are as relevant as recent ones.
- Family ties documentation: marriage and birth certificates, tax returns showing joint filing, proof of U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family members, evidence of shared residence.
- Financial and obligor documentation: proof of U.S. citizenship or LPR status for the prospective obligor, proof of income, recent bank statements. If there is any possibility that bond may be set, having the obligor pre-qualified saves significant time.
It is not uncommon for a family to arrive at the first consultation without some of this information. The attorney will work to fill the gaps. But material already gathered is material that does not have to be reconstructed under time pressure.
What Matters in a Detention Case
The legal landscape is moving quickly. Cases that seemed settled six months ago are being relitigated in federal district courts across the country. Circuits have begun to split. The Supreme Court will almost certainly take the question within the next term or two. In the meantime, people who have lived in the United States for decades, who have families and jobs and homes here, are being held in immigration detention without the procedural review that their counterparts received six months ago.
Representation matters in this environment more than in any other area of immigration practice. The largest national study of representation in immigration court — an American Immigration Council analysis of 1.2 million removal cases — found that only 14 percent of detained immigrants had counsel, and that detained immigrants with lawyers were twice as likely to obtain relief as those without, with the gap widening to more than tenfold among those who sought relief. The reasons are structural — the procedures are technical, the deadlines are short, and the litigation pathways run through federal habeas, BIA appeals, and petitions for review in the courts of appeals. None of that is territory an unrepresented detainee can navigate alone from inside a detention facility. For the full framework on appealing or moving to reopen a removal order, see our companion guide.
Immigration Law of Montana represents detained and non-detained clients in removal proceedings throughout Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and the broader Rocky Mountain region. Our removal defense practice includes bond litigation in immigration court for clients who qualify and coordination with families on the logistics of bond posting and release. The firm also maintains a growing federal-court practice — mandamus actions and other district-court filings — and can pursue federal habeas review of prolonged detention in appropriate cases. If the apprehension happened in Montana, see our Montana-specific family guide to the first hours after an ICE arrest. If you or a family member is in immigration detention, or if an apprehension appears likely, contact our office. The earlier we are engaged, the more options remain available.
Immigration Law of Montana, P.C. | immigrationlawofmt.com | This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration detention law is moving rapidly and fact-specific. Consult a qualified immigration attorney regarding individual circumstances.
