Inside Our Reporting on Immigration Bond Hearings: The Brief

For Detained Immigrants, an Uneven System

Our reporting team attended 55 immigration court bond hearings to see firsthand how expansions of mandatory detention authority under President Donald Trump are impacting ICE detainees’ efforts to be released from custody as they wait for their cases to be adjudicated.

Getting inside immigration court in the first place was one of the trickiest parts of our reporting process.

Unlike a typical civil or criminal court, full calendars for each immigration judge aren’t publicly accessible online. And though the courts are generally open to observers, immigration judges, who are part of the ...