Today’s post is just another short update, with some additional materials to support some prior posts.  Several past posts have tried to offer encouragement on seeking bond even when your client is undocumented and ICE is going to place a detainer.  (See “Detention Based on ICE Detainers Is Melting in the Ninth Circuit Too” in the September 2015 link at the right, “Is Global Warming Melting ICE’s Immigration Detainer Glaciers?” in the January 2014 link, “The Ice ICE Is Using to Ice Your Client Is Melting a Bit” in the October 2013 link, and “Can ICE Really Ice Your Client Even When He Gets a Bond in a Criminal Case?  Or Is There a Way to Melt ICE?” in the May 2012 link.)  Those posts encouraged seeking bond even if your client’s undocumented; included materials with arguments about how the government can’t then use an ICE detainer to keep your client in custody; and cited a number of cases – including, in the last post, a Ninth Circuit case – granting bonds in such cases.

Today’s update is just to let you know the arguments are gaining momentum; suggest they’re becoming more and more accepted; and provide some more materials to support arguments for bond for undocumented clients.  I recently listened in on a webinar put on by Central District of California DFPD Joan Politeo while on loan to the Administrative Office Defender Services Training Division as an attorney advisor, and she made it sound like courts in the trenches are beginning to see the light from our arguments and bond is getting set in some of these cases.  Joan was kind enough to agree to let me put up a post with her written materials and her powerpoint presentation, which I’m attaching in pdf form here and here.  These materials both discuss the case law and relevant statutes and attack some of the common arguments – or “myths” – the government advances in opposing bond for our undocumented clients.

The bottom line is that bond arguments should be made for undocumented clients based on the same factors as for our citizen clients.  There’s a lot of people out there having some luck, and there’s published case law and other authority you can point to to support your arguments and dispel the “myths.”