First, if you are arrested and get an ICE hold, your family should contact a reliable immigration lawyer. An immigration lawyer can tell you whether you should go ahead and pay your criminal bond so you can be transferred to ICE, or if you should wait.
Second, you should tell your family that you have an ICE hold, and that the police can keep you for up to 48 hours even after your criminal bond is paid or charges are dropped. You should make sure your family knows that, under the ICE hold, you will be transferred to ICE custody, and you will not be immediately released by the LEA.
Third, you need to remember that a criminal bond and an ICE bond are not the same thing. Let’s go back to the example. If your family pays the $10,000 criminal bond, you will normally be transferred to ICE under the authority of the ICE hold within 48 hours. Once you are in ICE custody, an ICE officer will decide if you can be given an ICE bond, and if so, how much it will be. If ICE sets a bond for you, this is a different bond than the criminal bond, and someone will have to pay the ICE bond in order for you to be released from ICE custody.
Fourth, you should know that if ICE sets you a bond that is too high for you or someone else to pay, most of the time you can have a hearing before an Immigration Judge and ask him or her to lower the bond.
However, sometimes the law will not allow ICE or an immigration judge to give you an immigration bond. This is what the law calls “mandatory detention.”
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