Immigration bond in Florida

01 Quick answers

What is the minimum bond?

The statute sets it at no less than $1,500. 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a)(2)(A). In practice amounts are usually well above that, set by the judge on the individual facts.

Who cannot get bond?

People subject to mandatory detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(c), which covers listed criminal and terrorism grounds — and now also includes being charged with or arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or an offense causing death or serious bodily injury.

What does the judge decide?

Two things: whether the person is a danger to the community, and whether they are a flight risk. The detained person carries the burden on both.

How do I find someone who was detained?

The ICE online detainee locator takes a name and country of birth, or an A-number. The A-number is the single most useful thing to have.

Who can post it?

Someone with lawful status in the United States, who provides identification and becomes responsible for the bond. The money is returned at the end of the case if the conditions were met.

Can a bond decision be appealed?

Yes, to the Board of Immigration Appeals, by either side. The government can also appeal a bond that was granted.

02 The first question

Eligible for bond, or subject to mandatory detention

Immigration detention splits into two categories and almost everything follows from which one applies.

Under 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) a person may be detained pending a decision on removal, and may be released on bond of at least $1,500 or on conditional parole. That is the discretionary track, and it is where a bond hearing happens.

Under § 1226(c) detention is mandatory. The subsection lists criminal and terrorism grounds, and it reaches people who are charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or who admit the conduct of burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting, assault of a law enforcement officer, or an offense causing death or serious bodily injury. The release exception is extremely narrow — essentially witness protection. For everyone else in that category, an immigration judge has no authority to set a bond however sympathetic the facts are.

The practical weight of that second list is easy to miss. An arrest for shoplifting, with no conviction, is enough to trigger it. That is the most direct reason a person who is not a citizen should have a criminal matter and an immigration matter looked at together rather than in sequence.

An arrest for shoplifting, with no conviction, can be enough to make detention mandatory.

03 The hearing

What a bond hearing actually decides

A bond hearing is a custody redetermination. It is separate from the removal case itself, it happens much sooner, and winning or losing it says nothing about whether the removal case will succeed.

The judge is deciding two questions, and the detained person carries the burden on both. Danger to the community is weighed mainly on the criminal record — what the offenses were, how long ago, whether there is a pattern. Flight risk is about ties: how long in the United States, family here and their status, a fixed address, employment history, property, and whether there is relief being pursued that gives a reason to keep showing up.

Evidence matters more than argument. Letters from employers and from family members with status, proof of address, tax filings, medical records for a dependent, school records for children, certificates from any program completed in custody. The hearing is short and the record is what the judge has in front of them.

Either side can appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals, including the government when bond is granted. One note worth knowing: § 1226(e) bars courts from reviewing the discretionary judgment itself, which is why the argument is made properly the first time rather than saved for appeal.

04 Unsettled law

Whether a bond hearing exists at all is currently being litigated

This is an area where the law is genuinely moving, and anyone writing confidently about it is overstating things. Since 2025 the government has taken the position that people who entered the country without inspection are applicants for admission, detained under a different statutory provision, and so are not entitled to a bond hearing before an immigration judge at all. The Board of Immigration Appeals adopted that position.

Federal courts of appeals have divided on it, and district courts have reached different results. The upshot is that the circuit where a person is detained has come to matter more than it ever normally would, and Florida sits in the Eleventh Circuit rather than the Fifth.

What this page will not do is state the current holding as settled. It changes, and a page that was right in the spring can be wrong by the fall. What it means practically is that a detained person should not accept "no bond is available" as the end of the conversation without the basis for it being checked against where the case actually is — including, in some situations, in federal district court rather than immigration court.

05 Practical steps

What to do in the first forty-eight hours

Find the A-number. It is a nine-digit number beginning with A, and it is on almost any immigration paperwork the person has. With it, the ICE detainee locator will find them, and the immigration court system will give the hearing date. Without it, everything is slower.

Find out where they are held. In South Florida that is often Krome North Service Processing Center or Broward Transitional Center, and the court for detained cases there is the Miami Krome Immigration Court. Where someone is held can change, sometimes to another state, which is one reason to act early.

Gather the record before the hearing, not after. Anything from a criminal case, open or closed, including the disposition — immigration law reads those documents differently from the way a state court does. Proof of time in the United States, proof of address, and the status documents of family members here.

Do not guess at the criminal history. Certified dispositions are what matter, and what a family member remembers about an old case is frequently wrong in a way that changes the answer on mandatory detention.