For the hundreds of people held in immigration detention across Michigan, bond is one of the only ways out. But it can be expensive.
The minimum bond amount an immigration judge can set is $1,500 — about double the average monthly car loan payment.
More than 100 detained immigrants were granted bonds after suing the federal government in the first two months of 2026. Michigan Public found only about a dozen were given minimum bonds. Many were set ten times as high. The highest bond amount for people whose detention was deemed illegal by federal court judges during this period of early 2026 was $30,000.
For some, that’s evidence that bond hearings are becoming a “sham.”
“Practically speaking, what they're doing is to prevent people from having an opportunity to get out of detention,” said George Pappas, a former immigration court judge in Massachusetts who was fired by the Trump administration in 2025. “It is an intention of cruelty to force these people to self-deport. That's the purpose. Get them into detention, they will be desperate to get out and that's what we (the Trump administration) want.”
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The DOJ and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversee immigration courts, declined an interview request. They also did not respond to written questions in time for publication.
Unlike other courts, immigration courts are part of the Department of Justice (DOJ) — meaning they’re run by the administration that has made detaining and deporting people without legal status a top priority.
Immigration judges get a lot of discretion in bond decisions. They’re often asking immigrants to prove that they’re not a danger or “flight risk.” Factors that might contribute to a granted bond could include employment history, property ownership, community ties, a clean record, and the strength of the immigrant’s case against deportation.
To get out of detention, immigrants are required to pay the whole bond at once, as a tool that they’ll show up to future hearings. The government doesn’t keep bond money. After an immigrant’s case is over — whether they are deported or allowed to stay in the U.S. — the money gets returned, with a low interest rate.
Still, it can be difficult to come up with the sum — especially when a family member has been unable to work for months while they’re being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
To cover the costs, some have turned to GoFundMe or other crowd funding sites, individual donors, nonprofit bond fund groups, or private loans.
According to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), an organization that collects and shares government data through open records requests, the median cost for bonds granted by immigration judges in Michigan was at or below $5,000 for the last few months of 2025. In January and February 2026, the median was at or over $7,000.
A $50,000 bond
In one case, Ali Petit Oropeza was given a $50,000 bond to get out of immigrant detention in the Calhoun County Jail in November. That’s the highest cost Michigan Public found in court documents for people who were granted bond after a hearing was ordered by a federal judge between Nov. 2025 and mid-Feb. 2026.
“Given that insanely high amount, his family had no way to pay it,” his attorney, Brittni Rivera said in an email.
According to court filings, Oropeza was a police officer in Venezuela who came to the U.S. after facing persecution for his opposition to the Nicholas Maduro regime. Rivera said he has no criminal record. He was arrested by Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) at the Windsor Tunnel.
“The [immigration] judge set a high bond because he believed Ali was a flight risk,” Rivera said. “Many documents supporting the bond were provided to the court, including proof of his job and his U.S. citizen child.”
Oropeza’s bond was paid by the Midwest Immigration Bond Fund (MIBF), a nonprofit that collects donations to help pay detained immigrants’ bonds, after his attorney reached out to them.
“We operate on a first-come, first-served basis,” said Raf Rodriguez, MIBF board member and a paralegal at the firm that represented Oropeza. “We do not conduct or consider merit-based assessments… If funds are available, we post the bond.”
![An editorial collage combining a black-and-white photograph of the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building, home to the Detroit Immigration Court, with colorful torn-paper fragments of text clipped from immigration court bond hearing documents. The scraps — in pink, blue, and green — display partial phrases including "Granted" (with a checked checkbox), "Denied" (with a checked checkbox), "a flight risk," "Respondent is a flight risk," "the Immigration Judge denied Pe[titioner]," "(ICE), released Petit[ioner]," "under bond of $5,000," "bond of $15,000, with," and "Denied, because." The overlapping fragments visually contrast bond grants and denials, evoking the bureaucratic and high-stakes nature of immigration detention proceedings.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/4a81ad4/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1633x1080+144+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F75%2F7b%2Fa875b7d043b4b67d5862f5501af5%2Fbond-headers-5.png)
Released after months in detention, Oropeza now lives in Indiana.
"A lot of discretion" in setting bond
While Ali Petit Oropeza’s bond was singularly high, Michigan Public found dozens of people had costs set at over $10,000. Several were set at or over $15,000, including:
- A Mexican father of five U.S. citizens who has been in the United States since 1998. His bond was set at $20,000.
- A Cuban asylum seeker who was arrested when he showed up at a scheduled ICE check-in appointment in December. His bond was set at $30,000.
- A Mauritanian asylum seeker who had a valid work permit and was also arrested at an ICE check-in appointment last November. His bond was set at $15,000.
Court documents Michigan Public reviewed contained no explanations from immigration judges about why bonds were set at any amount. It is possible the judge was aware of evidence that was not presented elsewhere in the court record.
Daniel Caudillo, a former immigration judge who directs the Immigration Law Clinic at Texas Tech, said immigration judges are given “a lot of discretion" to decide bond amounts. But he expects most are following “a pattern.”
“For instance, an individual that may qualify for a green card through his spouse that entered the country lawfully being overstayed and otherwise has no criminal history and substantial family ties… [immigration judges] usually lean towards a low bond in those cases,” Caudillo said. “Whereas a recent arrival with a shaky asylum request is generally not going to be granted a very low bond. They can be granted a very high bond for purposes of making sure that that individual appears in court.”
Appeals keep some bond recipients locked up
When an immigration judge grants someone a bond, ICE has the ability to appeal that decision — leaving the individual detained until a higher court rules on the matter.
Ruby Robinson, senior managing attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said a 19-year-old client who was given a $35,000 bond is facing such an appeal.
“So, even if they were able to collect that amount of money, the bond is basically on hold,” he said. “One of the biggest challenges is appealing a bond decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals could take months.”
Some are going back to federal courts to file “second round” habeas petitions to challenge high bonds or continued detention while their bond is under appeal, Robinson added.
They’re being held in detention until a final decision is handed down.
One of the first habeas cases to show up in Michigan’s Western District Federal Court in 2025 came from Jose Puerto-Hernandez, an 18-year-old high school graduate from New Jersey. An immigration judge granted him a $5,000 bond “based on his strong community ties, high G.P.A., and his active participation in his community church.”
Yet, Puerto-Hernandez remained in the North Lake Processing Center for weeks after his hearing. The Trump administration argued the law allowed them to keep detaining him while they appealed his bond.
A Republican-appointed federal judge in Grand Rapids disagreed. Western District Judge Paul L. Maloney said the administration was trying to “act as both prosecution and judge” by ignoring the immigration judge’s bond decision.
Hernandez was released a few days later.
![An editorial collage combining a black-and-white photograph of the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building, home to the Detroit Immigration Court, with colorful torn-paper fragments of text clipped from immigration court bond hearing documents. The scraps — in pink, blue, and green — display partial phrases including "Granted" (with a checked checkbox), "Denied" (with a checked checkbox), "a flight risk," "Respondent is a flight risk," "the Immigration Judge denied Pe[titioner]," "(ICE), released Petit[ioner]," "under bond of $5,000," "bond of $15,000, with," and "Denied, because." The overlapping fragments visually contrast bond grants and denials, evoking the bureaucratic and high-stakes nature of immigration detention proceedings.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/c57a8e5/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1070+0+5/resize/560x312!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F75%2F7b%2Fa875b7d043b4b67d5862f5501af5%2Fbond-headers-5.png)
