A lawsuit alleges that the US government withholds 300 million unreturned bail bonds to immigrants

U.S. immigration authorities have illegally withheld more than $300 million in bond payments posted by tens of thousands of low-income immigrant families, a lawsuit filed Tuesday alleges.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held the money so long that about $240 million was transferred to a Treasury account for unclaimed funds, said Motley Rice LLC, one of the law firms that filed the lawsuit in the federal court for the Eastern District of New York.

The lawsuit seeks to be certified as class action and cover all people who have paid thousands of dollars in cash deposits to release immigrant family members or friends who were detained under the supervision of ICE, as the immigration service is known.

Immigration bonds are set at the discretion of ICE and immigration judges and allow non-U.S. citizens to leave detention centers while their cases are being determined. On average, they are usually about $6,000, according to the lawsuit.

Based on official information obtained through special requests and other cases, there are tens of thousands of people who would be part of the lawsuit. “The precise number and identity of class members will be determined through government records,” the lawsuit states.

Once immigration cases are concluded, people who posted bonds are entitled to a refund of the money they paid immediately, in some cases, or within about 60 days, in others. ICE, however, “regularly does not return these funds, even when all conditions have been met and the procedure has concluded,” according to the lawsuit.

ICE declined to comment and said it does not comment on ongoing or pending litigation.

The lawsuit was filed under the name of Douglas Cortez, of Uniondale, New York, who signed a contract with ICE for $10,000 to have his friend released. In August 2023, his friend’s case was resolved, but more than a year later Cortez still has not received any notification or the return of the money he deposited in cash.

“They have taken thousands of dollars from hard-working immigrant families who deserve their money back,” Deepak Gupta, an attorney at Gupta Wessler LLP, the other law firm that filed the lawsuit, told the Associated Press. “We want ICE to fix this system, we want the court to declare that ICE is violating its legal obligations under the contract so that this does not happen to other families in the future.”

Ada Salazar, a 28-year-old Salvadoran woman, asked an uncle to post $5,000 bail so she could be released in February 2016, shortly after requesting political asylum after crossing the border with Mexico.

Salazar received permanent residency in 2021, but his money has not yet been returned, he says. Now he is joining the lawsuit.

“I hope to receive the money back,” Salazar said in a recent video interview with the AP. “It would be very helpful,” said the woman, who has a 6-year-old daughter and a small food business in North Carolina.

The lawsuit indicates that, after two years of investigation, estimates suggest that ICE has withheld more than $300 million in unreturned bail bonds and that some of that money is still in the hands of that federal agency. Most of it has been transferred to other government accounts, according to the lawsuit.

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