Can You Get Bond if You Are an Immigrant?

 Posted on December 14, 2023 in Immigration

Immigrants arrested on criminal charges often face additional hurdles in securing pretrial release. Language barriers, financial limitations, and immigration status issues compound standard release considerations. Uncertainty and anxiety heighten when detained far from family and friends. Gaining bond while fighting your criminal case is critical. So, can immigrants reasonably expect bonds? It can be less daunting with a Texas lawyer on your side.

Bond Eligibility Factors

Immigration status alone does not automatically determine whether or not you will get a bond. However, it may wrongly influence bond assumptions regarding flight risk and danger. Having an attorney present counterarguments minimizing such notions. Factors favoring immigrant bonds include:

• Having relief avenues against deportation
• Lengthy residence in the area
• Family and community ties keeping you in the area
• Steady employment and housing
• Lack of prior criminal history

Establishing these stabilizing life commitments often persuades judges toward granting bonds. The defense must highlight reasons why clients will dutifully attend court instead of fleeing, even if deportation follows a conviction.

Overturning Prejudicial Assumptions

Prosecutors sometimes push anti-immigration bias or fear claiming "illegal" status makes defendants unworthy of release. Your lawyer must reverse such problematic arguments. All people maintain presumed innocence pretrial regardless of immigration status or ethnicity. Plus, adverse legal effects exist whether one flees or remains through the case conclusion.

Judges understand most families will not abandon their homes, belongings, and stability accumulated over the years. Nor will they abandon fighting charges threatening that cherished stability. Underlying bias has no legal place affecting standard bond assessments.

Bond Amounts and Conditions

Immigrants obtaining release may encounter elevated bond rates or extra conditions like ankle monitors. Bonds doubling those of citizens for equivalent charges still occur, although they are improving. This unfair practice slowly reverses through staunch legal advocacy. As with citizen defendants, immigrants out on bond must comply with all court dates, orders, and release terms or forfeit bail and return to jail.

Contact a Dallas, TX Immigration Lawyer

Navigating bond hearings can be difficult without an attorney well-versed in criminal justice practices. This is especially true for immigrants confronting added burdens. Working with an Irving, TX immigration attorney can improve your case's outcome. You deserve the fairest resolution. While no specific outcome is guaranteed, you have more potential when you have legal representation on your side. Call John W. Lawit, LLC at 214-609-2242 to begin your case and see what may be possible for you.