Lawsuit claims ICE withheld $300M in bond payments from immigrants

By GISELA SALOMON The Associated Press

FILE - A security guard poses for a photo next to the group holding cells during a media tour of the Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC), hosted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Harlingen Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) in Los Fresnos, Texas, June 10, 2024. (Veronica Gabriela Cardenas/Pool Photo via AP, File)[ASSOCIATED PRESS/Veronica Gabriela Cardenas]

MIAMI (AP) — U.S. immigration authorities illegally kept more than $300 million in bond payments from tens of thousands of low-income immigrant families and U.S. citizens, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

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

The lawsuit, which addresses longstanding complaints, seeks class-action status for those who paid cash to bail out family members detained by ICE. Motley Rice, a firm that represents clients on a wide variety of class-action lawsuits, said it had been investigating the issue for two years.

Immigration bonds are set by ICE and immigration judges and allow noncitizens who are facing removal proceedings to be released in the U.S. while their cases are decided in court. The average bail payment is $6,000 according to the lawsuit.

Based on information obtained through public records requests and other cases, there are tens of thousands of class members, the lawsuit claims. “The precise number and identification of the class members will be ascertainable from the government’s records,” it says.

Once the immigration case has concluded, family and friends of those detained are entitled to get their money back immediately in some cases or within 60 days in others, according to the online ICE handbook. ICE, however, “regularly fails to return these funds, even when all conditions have been met and proceedings have concluded,” according to the lawsuit.

ICE declined to comment, saying it does not discuss pending litigation.

The case filed this week is on behalf Douglas Cortez of Uniondale, New York, who posted bond for $10,000 to have his friend released from detention. In August 2023, his friend’s proceedings were dismissed, but more than a year later Cortez has still not received any notice and has not received a refund for the cash deposit he made.

“They have taken thousands of dollars from hardworking immigrant families who deserve to have their money returned,” said Deepak Gupta, an attorney from Gupta Wessler LLP, the other law firm that filed the lawsuit. “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 doesn’t happen to other families again in the future.”

Gupta said that they arrived at the figure of $300 million after carefully reviewing government documents they obtained through FOIA requests and court records.

Ada Salazar, 28, has not received her money after her uncle posted $5,000 in February 2016. She is from El Salvador, was granted legal status in 2021 and now she is ready to join the lawsuit.

“I hope to receive the money back, that is the promise they made,” Salazar, a mother of a 6-year-old and owner of food truck in North Carolina, told The Associated Press.