We pay immigration bond and pretrial bail to free people from detention. We reject the assumption that imprisonment is necessary or inevitable, affirm the dignity and agency of imprisoned people, and minimize the harm imprisonment inflicts on families and communities. We are committed to acting in solidarity with all movements working to abolish the imprisonment of our fellow human beings.
We recognize the inherent dignity of all people, and believe that everyone has the right to seek a life of peace and safety.
Reconocemos la dignidad inherente de todas las personas y creemos que todas las personas tienen derecho a buscar una vida de paz y seguridad.
We respect all people’s right to make choices about their lives free from the harm and coercion caused by imprisonment.
Respetamos el derecho de cada persona a tomar decisiones sobre sus vidas sin sufrir daños ni la coerción causada por el encarcelamiento.
In the face of systems that dehumanize, divide, and confuse, we choose to love and trust each other.
Frente a los sistemas que deshumanizan, dividen y confunden, elegimos amarnos y confiar uno en el otro.
We strive to uplift the voices and prioritize the participation of members of communities unduly impacted by detention, to ensure that we are not recreating systemic structures of oppression within our work.
Nos esforzamos por elevar las voces y priorizar la participación de los miembros de las comunidades afectadas, para asegurarnos de que no estamos recreando estructuras sistémicas de opresión dentro de nuestro trabajo.
What’s cash bail?
When people are detained by ICE for immigration proceedings, ICE or an immigration judge can set a bond--an amount of money the person must pay to get out of detention while their case is pending. Bond amounts range from $1500 to $50,000 or more, and the average in our area is $5000-$7000. If the person cannot pay the full amount of the bond in cash, they stay in detention.
Cash bail in criminal cases works basically the same way. When a person is arrested and charged with a crime, a judge sets a bail amount. If the person can’t pay bail, they stay in jail until their case is over. Over 70% of people in jail in Iowa are being held in pretrial detention--a time during which they are legally presumed innocent.
In both immigration and criminal contexts, cash bail is a violent, coercive abuse of power that disproportionately harms poor people, immigrants, Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color. People who are unable to pay their bond are held in detention, away from their families, homes, and communities. As a result, they may lose their housing or jobs, may be unable to provide necessary care for children or other family members, may be unable to access medical care, or may experience losses and instability in myriad other aspects of day-to-day life. The cash bail system is also racially biased: bond and bail is systematically set higher for Black people than white.
Why abolition?
The justification usually given for all the harm detention inflicts on individuals, families, and communities is public safety. But detention and imprisonment do not keep us safe. In fact, they actively make people and communities less safe, whether it’s by diverting resources that could instead be used to provide food, housing, education, infrastructure, and other services, or by directly harming individuals and families who then struggle to regain stability.
Our bond fund is not a solution to these problems. The only way to eliminate the harm caused by detention and imprisonment is to abolish them entirely. We seek to serve the larger project of abolition each and every time we pay bond by rejecting the assumption that imprisonment is necessary or inevitable, by affirming the dignity of imprisoned people and tangibly acknowledging their agency, and by minimizing the damage detention inflicts on families and communities. We also strive to work with, and in support of, movements focused on ending detention and imprisonment.
One last note on abolition: though many have heard this term applied to policing and imprisonment for the first time recently due to the uprisings in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, prison abolition is a decades-old concept that has been comprehensively developed by (primarily) Black feminists. We encourage anyone who wants to learn more about the abolition movement to use the following resources as a starting point:
If You’re New to Abolition: Study Group Guide
What Is Abolition, And Why Do We Need It?