Detained vs. Released

The Three Tracks

Immigration court operates two fundamentally different systems under one roof. The detained docket moves fast — cases are resolved in weeks or months because the government is paying to house the respondent. The non-detained docket is where the backlog lives — cases take 3-5 years because there's no urgency (or cost) to resolve them quickly.

The Detention Outcome Gap

Research consistently shows that detained immigrants have significantly worse outcomes than non-detained ones, even controlling for case strength. The reasons are structural:

• Attorney access collapses in detention: Many ICE facilities are in rural areas — Lumpkin, Georgia; Pearsall, Texas; Adelanto, California. Immigration lawyers cluster in cities. Detained respondents may have phone access for 30 minutes a day, if that.
• Evidence gathering is impossible: You can't get affidavits from witnesses, request police reports from your home country, or visit the consulate when you're locked up.
• Coercion to accept voluntary departure: ICE officers and even judges may suggest VD as the "easy way out." When you're in jail and don't understand the system, accepting seems rational even if you have a strong case.
• Compressed timelines: Detained cases get fast-tracked. What might be a 3-year case on the non-detained docket becomes a 3-week case in detention. There's simply not enough time to build a proper defense.

Who Gets Detained?

Detention isn't random. You're more likely to be detained if you:

• Were apprehended at or near the border
• Have a criminal conviction (even minor — DUI, shoplifting)
• Were previously ordered removed and reentered
• Were flagged in a workplace raid or enforcement operation
• Failed a credible fear screening

Mandatory detention applies in several categories — certain criminal convictions, arriving aliens, and terrorism-related charges all trigger automatic detention with no bond hearing.

The Demographics

Of 5,197,134 cases with gender data, 59.2% are male and 40.8% are female. Men are disproportionately represented in detention (they account for a much higher share of the detained docket than the non-detained docket), reflecting enforcement patterns that target male border crossers and criminal history-based detention.

Women in detention face specific challenges: separation from children, limited access to gender-specific healthcare, and difficulty preparing domestic violence-based asylum claims from inside a detention facility.

The Cost

ICE detention costs approximately $150 per person per day. With 2,115,304 detention cases in the system (not all simultaneously), the annual cost of immigration detention runs into the billions. Private prison companies — GEO Group, CoreCivic — operate many of the largest facilities and have financial incentives to keep beds full.