Ask The Inmate. Real answers from people who've been there.

Yes. Permanent resident status, commonly called a green card, does not protect someone from deportation when a criminal conviction is involved. Immigration consequences are one of the most serious and frequently overlooked aspects of a criminal case for non-citizens, and they can apply even to people who have lived in the United States for decades. Certain categories of criminal convictions trigger mandatory deportation proceedings under federal immigration law. These include aggravated felonies, which is a broad category that includes crimes like...

An ICE detainer, officially called Form I-247A, is a written request from ICE to a jail, prison, or other law enforcement agency. It asks that agency to hold a person for up to 48 additional hours beyond when they would normally be released, so that ICE has time to come and take custody. There are several critical things to understand about detainers. First, a detainer is a request, not a court order or a warrant. Local law enforcement agencies are not...

Yes. Having no criminal record does not protect someone from ICE detention. This is one of the most common misconceptions families have and it is important to understand clearly. ICE has the authority to detain anyone it believes is removable under immigration law. A removable person is someone whose presence in the United States violates immigration rules, regardless of whether they have ever committed a crime. This includes people who entered without authorization, people who overstayed a visa, people whose immigration...

Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas is an ICE detention facility operated by the federal government. Sending money to a detainee there works differently than at a standard jail or prison. ICE detention facilities use a separate financial system from the Bureau of Prisons. The primary way to deposit funds for a detainee at Port Isabel is through Western Union's Quick Collect service, which allows deposits to be made online, through the app, or at physical Western Union...

Clerical errors such as a misspelled name or incorrect date of birth in ICE detention records can sometimes be used as the basis for a legal challenge, but they rarely result in automatic release. It is important to understand what these errors can and cannot do before building your hopes around them. What they can do is provide grounds to challenge the validity of an ICE detainer or to argue for a bond hearing. An attorney who specializes in immigration detention...

The Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York is an immigration detention center, and it operates differently from a standard county jail or state prison. The Batavia Immigration Program provides universal legal representation to people detained there who are facing deportation and cannot afford private counsel. It functions as a public defender model for immigration proceedings and is funded through the New York State Office of New Americans. Anyone detained there who is financially eligible and does not have...

In most fundamental ways, prisons are prisons. The basics, the counts, the routine, the boredom, the commissary, the mail system, do not vary dramatically from one facility to the next. The walls are different but the daily rhythm is roughly the same wherever you are. What does vary is who is running the place. Otero is a privately operated facility, and privately managed prisons tend to run tighter than state-operated facilities in some respects. The staff at private prisons are generally...

Almost certainly nothing serious, and the timing is actually the most likely explanation. Moving from one housing unit or status into general population involves a lot of logistics happening simultaneously. New cell assignment, orientation to the unit's rules and schedules, getting settled with new bunkmates, learning where everything is and how this particular unit operates. Phone access in the first day or two after a move is not always immediate. He may need to update his approved call list at the...

Hopefully, he won't have to do any time but with this current administration, we have no idea what kind of time they are handing out third timers. The "zero tolerance" enforcement policy is to charge every person “illegally entering” the U.S. along the southwest border with a crime. Asylum seekers would be prosecuted under section 1325(a) of the 8 United States Code (U.S.C.), which states that “improper entry by alien” is a federal misdemeanor with a first offense carrying maximum fines of $50 to $250 and/or a six-month prison...

The federal immigration hold means that there is a warrant for some reason. The hold notifies the facility to not release the person, but instead to transfer them to federal custody at the end of the jail term. An immigration hold may be placed after either a random check by ICE officers (who sometimes visit jails and interview inmates or after being notified by the law enforcement agency detaining the person. When DHS places a hold,  state law enforcement agencies are...

Leavenworth Detention Center is operated by CoreCivic, formerly known as CCA, and uses IC Solutions as its phone carrier. Knowing the carrier is the starting point for understanding how to reduce your per-minute costs. IC Solutions charges rates based on the destination number being called. Local numbers, meaning numbers with an area code close to the Leavenworth facility in Kansas, are billed at a lower rate than out-of-state numbers. If your phone number is already local to the Leavenworth area, you...

You can stay in contact but you need to be careful about which methods you use and what information they require you to provide. Writing a letter is your safest option right now. Through InmateAid's letter service your personal address does not appear on the envelope, which provides a layer of privacy that direct mail does not. The letter reaches your husband without exposing your location to anyone processing the mail at the facility. Phone calls carry more risk depending on how...

A federal detainer is a legal hold placed on an inmate by federal authorities, typically the US Marshals Service, indicating that the federal government wants custody of that person once the current state or local matter is resolved or when they are ready to take them. The timeline for the actual pickup is one of the most unpredictable aspects of the federal system. In practice, federal detainer pickups can happen anywhere from a few weeks to several months after the detainer...