In Hebrew, numbers are represented by letters and a great deal of meaning is read into what word a "number" "spells." "18" spells "life" so it is considered a very lucky number. On this, my 18th day in Artesia, I am cautiously - C A U T I O U S L Y - optimistic that we witnessed a shift. (The superstitious side of me makes me hesitant to even put this into words.
We had a women on our client list today who was surprised that we called her in: ICE had set a reasonable bond amount for her before any of the usual hearings required to set a bond amount.
Why?
Preparing for the hearings is laborious. The AILA project has attorneys all of the country who take the contact information we, on the ground, obtain and contact friends and relatives thousands of miles away in order to prove good character, good connections to a person in the U.S. who will help ensure that the person will attend hearings, the financial means of these people to support a mother and her children; a mother who will not have work authorization.
Then, another team puts together a nearly complete motion for a bond hearing, with all of the supporting documents and a wonderful memo in support of the motion. Late at night, we here in Artesia, finalize these drafts, send them to the court and opposing counsel and get them into our electronic and paper files.
The hearings, a few days later, are the hearings I've been writing about: questions, accusations, inequities, arbitrarily low or high bonds, tears of joy and tears of frustration.
We wonder if the government, after four months of perhaps 20 such hearings a day, has begun to realize that the "going rate" is about $3,000 and that they could save themselves a LOT of money and work, by just granting that bond amount. This would save the expense of the process, but also the expense of housing the families. We will carefully watch the cases to see if, today, we detected a shift in the government's approach.
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