SAN DIEGO, CMC – The San Diego, California-based Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA) on Thursday condemned the Trump administration’s new executive order abolishing cashless bail across the United States as a “calculated assault on Black immigrant communities.”
“This regressive policy reimposes the cruel regime of wealth-based pretrial detention and deepens the two-tiered justice system that incarcerates the poor while the affluent walk free,” Guerline Jozef, HBA executive director, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).
“Research has long demonstrated that jurisdictions without cash bail do not experience increases in crime, and instead ensure fairer access to justice for low-income individuals,” she added.
“This executive order is a disgraceful, reactionary power grab that weaponizes the law against the poorest among us and is a potential violation of the Eighth Amendment due to the undermining of due process and presumption of innocence principles.
“By reviving cash bail, the administration intentionally targets Black immigrant communities, denying them freedom and dignity while enriching the bail industry,” Jozef continued. “We will resist this injustice at every level and continue to fight for a legal system that upholds the humanity of all people, regardless of their ZIP code or bank account.”
She said HBA stands in “unwavering solidarity with all those criminalized by poverty and oppression.
“Our fight is for freedom, not just in name but for every soul that dares to belong,” Jozef affirmed.
In signing the executive order on Monday, Trump said that “maintaining order and public safety requires incarcerating individuals whose pending criminal charges or criminal history demonstrate a clear ongoing risk to society.
“When these individuals are released without bail under city or state policies, they are permitted, even encouraged, to endanger law-abiding, hard-working Americans further because they know our laws will not be enforced,” he said.
“Our great law enforcement officers risk their lives to arrest potentially violent criminals, only to be forced to arrest the same individuals, sometimes for the same crimes, while they await trial on the previous charges. This is a waste of public resources and a threat to public safety.
“As president, I will require commonsense policies that protect Americans’ safety and well-being by incarcerating individuals who are known threats,” Trump added. “It is, therefore, the policy of my administration that federal policies and resources should not be used to support jurisdictions with cashless bail policies, to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
On Saturday, HBA strongly condemned Trump’s policy changes that strip millions of immigrants, including Caribbean nationals, of their right to bond hearings and facilitate mass arrests during immigration court proceedings.
“These actions undermine the rule of law, violate constitutional protections, and erode the integrity of the judicial system,” said Jozef, noting that this policy applies retroactively to Caribbean and other immigrants who entered the US unlawfully, regardless of their duration of residence or ties to the community.
Jozef stated that the directive requires such individuals to remain in detention throughout their removal proceedings, with exceptions granted solely at the discretion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, not judges.
A class-action lawsuit filed by 12 immigrants and their legal advocates alleges that the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security coordinated to arrest and deport immigrants during their court hearings.
The lawsuit asserts that these actions violate due process rights under US law and the Fifth Amendment, resulting in the expedited removal of vulnerable individuals without due process hearings.
“This policy, which denies bond hearings to undocumented immigrants, is a blatant violation of the fundamental principles of justice and due process,” Jozef said.
“By stripping individuals of their right to a fair hearing before a judge, the administration undermines the core of our legal system and subjects vulnerable people to indefinite detention,” she added. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to uphold the rule of law, and will continue to advocate for the rights and dignity of all individuals, regardless of immigration status.”
The New York-based Vera Institute, an advocacy group that works to transform the criminal justice and immigration systems, noted that Trump’s new policy prevents judges from granting bond to anyone held in detention by ICE who had entered the United States without documentation.
“This policy, in tandem with the Laken Riley Act’s expansion of mandatory detention and the One Big Beautiful Bill’s supercharged spending on immigration enforcement and new immigration prisons, threatens to send thousands more people into notoriously appalling conditions as they await their day in court,” the institute said.
It stated that, under existing law, immigration judges have the discretion to determine whether a person held in detention is neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community and is eligible for a bond hearing.
At the hearing, the Vera Institute stated that the immigrant could then argue for release on bond as their case continues.
However, the institute stated that judges are denied this discretion if the person falls under specific categories, including their method of entry into the United States and whether they have been convicted of particular crimes.
In these cases, the institute said the immigrant is put under “mandatory detention” and forced to fight their case while incarcerated.
The Vera Institute said the Laken Riley Act, enacted in January, vastly expanded the criteria for mandatory detention to include people arrested for and accused of many nonviolent theft-related offenses and, for the first time, those arrested for and accused of criminal conduct but who have yet to be given a fair trial to determine their innocence.
In July, the Vera Institute noted that the US Department of Homeland Security announced it would further expand mandatory detention to anyone who entered the US without inspection.
“This means that millions of people who might have been granted a bond hearing are now being denied one and kept in ICE detention,” the Vera Institute said.
Meanwhile, it said, as releases from immigration prisons have slowed to a trickle, daily detention numbers have reached record highs.
“By stripping even more people of the possibility of supervised release, Trump’s new actions will make things exponentially worse,” the Vera Institute warned. “Locking people away in immigration prison when they are suspected of being in the country without legal status is unjust and unnecessary.”
The institute pointed to decades of research that shows that immigrants do not need to be held behind bars to ensure that they appear for their immigration court proceedings.
“We have also long seen how holding people in jail before trial in the criminal court system has made communities less safe,” the Vera Institute said. “Trump’s aggressive enforcement since January has put more people in detention and will lengthen the time they’re forced to spend waiting for the resolution of their cases.
“Faced with the cruelty of immigration prison, many who have lawful claims to stay safely in the United States will have all the more incentive to accept deportation instead,” it added. “It is inhumane to make people fleeing danger await the outcome of their court proceedings while locked away in deadly immigration facilities.
“People who come to the United States deserve dignity, safety, and fairness of due process,” the Vera Institute continued. “They should be free to attend immigration court with the support of legal representation to help them understand their rights and prevent wrongful deportations.
“Funneling thousands more people into an immigration detention system that is riddled with abuse and cruelty will cause immeasurable harm,” it said. “The impact extends beyond the lives of immigrants themselves; it is separating families, destabilizing communities, and jeopardizing our economy.”
The Vera Institute noted that while Trump states that his mass detention and deportation agenda promotes public safety, “the opposite is true.”
“Sending masked agents into workplaces, courthouses, places of worship, schools, and homes to terrorize everyday people who pose no real threat to public safety is causing rippling harm and distrust,” the institute said. “Instead of spending billions of dollars to expand pretrial detention, we should be devoting resources to programs that promote family unity, build strong communities and economies, and actually keep people safe.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that it has joined Caribbean and other immigrants’ rights advocates in filing a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to strike down the new policy enacted by ICE ending bond eligibility for Caribbean and other immigrants currently detained by the agency.
The ACLU warned that, if the new policy is to continue, “tens of thousands of immigrants would be jailed indefinitely while their immigration cases are considered for months or years on end.
“The new policy takes away immigrants’ ability to seek release on bond, regardless of whether they have been living in the United States for years, and regardless of whether they have any criminal record,” it said.
The ACLU said this filing amends an existing habeas petition filed on behalf of plaintiffs unlawfully detained in the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in southern California, who were denied consideration for bond by ICE and immigration judges in the Adelanto Immigration Court.
The ACLUC stated that the district court issued an order requiring a bond hearing within seven days and that the plaintiffs now seek to represent a nationwide class of individuals subject to the ICE policy, as well as a class of individuals denied bond hearings by the Adelanto Immigration Court.
The ACLU, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and attorneys Niels Frenzen and Jean Reisz, is representing the plaintiffs and proposed classes.
“This detention policy blatantly violates the immigration laws that have been in effect for almost thirty years,” said Matt Adams, legal director for Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. “Our clients are standing up on behalf of themselves and thousands of others like them, who have lived in this country with their families for years, and are entitled to individual custody determinations.”
Michael Tan, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said that the US Constitution “guarantees all persons within the boundaries of the United States rights to equal due process under the law, full stop.
“The Trump administration seeks to rewrite our Constitutional bedrock, denying millions of immigrants in cruel detention facilities the ability to seek bond,” he said. “With one memo, ICE hopes to keep people away from their families for months – or even years – before their cases are even heard.”
The ACLUC said the immigration advocates challenge Trump’s attempt to override US immigration laws and regulations, “which provide the right to request release on bond, deny fundamental rights to due process, and arbitrarily reverse decades of policy and practice of giving bond hearings.
“Noncitizens present within the United States have Constitutional rights, and the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including undocumented immigrants,” the ACLU said.
“Denying eligibility to bail for these detainees and depriving them of a hearing to determine whether they are a flight risk or danger to others violates these same rights,” it added.
Eva Bitrán, director of immigrants’ rights and senior staff attorney at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said that “indefinitely detaining people—especially but not exclusively those who have lived in this country for many years—is not only cruel, it’s against the law.
“This case seeks to vindicate the principle that people in our government’s custody deserve an opportunity to be heard about whether their continued detention is lawful,” she added.
According to the complaint, ICE has adopted the position that noncitizens who entered the United States without admission are ineligible for immigration court bond hearings.
However, the ACLU stated that US federal courts have continually ruled that immigration laws and the US Constitution provide for such hearings.
“The government’s no-bond policy is a new component of the administration’s mass immigration enforcement practice, which is unlawful under the immigration laws and the Constitution and, if not stopped, will result in thousands of additional people being detained in for-profit immigration prisons for extended periods of time,” said co-counsels Niels W. Frenzen and Jean Reisz in a joint statement.
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