Being an immigrant is hard enough; you’re in a completely different environment to the one that you’re used to, you don’t understand the culture, and you haven’t got any friends to help you through it. These problems can be compounded if you are put in jail and have to battle against a legal system that you don’t understand in any way. If you’re sent to jail, you’ll probably want to post bail in order to get back to your family or just live with some freedom prior to your appearance in court. The process of being bailed out of jail is slightly different for immigrants, and requires an immigration bail bond.

An immigration bond is also a federal bond, and is different in some ways to standard state or county bail bonds. When a bond is posted for an immigrant, the details will go straight to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who will take the money and look into the case further. It is also important to note that you’ll need to talk to a bail bond agency who is specifically licensed to work with immigration bail bonds; something which not all bail bond agencies are allowed to do.

Working with an immigration bail bond is fraught with difficulties for an agency, for example there may be a language barrier which breaks down communication. It could also be the case that very little personal information is available, and there could be identification problems. All of these issues, added on to the higher risk of bailing out an immigrant, mean that the deposit asked for by the agency is likely to be between and fifteen and twenty percent. The bond agency may also ask for collateral, but again because of the immigration circumstances, this may be hard to come by. Ultimately, immigration bail bonds are much more difficult to deal with than standard bail bonds, and as such take longer to process and have more risk involved. Working with a professional bail bond agency, with experience of immigration bail bonds, will help you hugely in this matter.