Bond Help Heartens Immigrants

All three said they send most of their earnings back to family in Guatemala and did not have enough savings to cover their bonds. Their brother Obdulio Gonzalez, who is a legal permanent resident and has lived in the United States for 10 years, was able to come up with the $6,500 needed to bail out Sergio and $3,500 toward the other two. But he said he probably would have had to leave one of the brothers in detention if the bond fund had not covered the remaining $3,500.

As it was, Obdulio, 37, who is self-employed as a house painter and has a wife and U.S.-born daughter, used up his entire rainy-day fund, which he saves over the summer to cover his mortgage and other bills during the winter season, when jobs are scarce.

"Honestly, I don't know how I'm going to survive this December," Obdulio said during an interview at the kitchen table of his ranch house in an Annapolis suburb on a recent evening. "I'm just asking God for more clients to give me more work, and I'm lowering my prices to get as many jobs as I can."

Sergio and Hugo, who share Obdulio's burly build and reserved demeanor, listened with a mixture of guilt and gratitude. If they hadn't been able to bond out, Hugo said, they would almost certainly have agreed to deportation rather than trying to contest their case from detention.

"It's hard to explain how terrible it felt to be locked up in that tiny, hot room, with just a bed and a metal toilet," he said. "You lose all hope. You just feel despair."

It remains to be seen whether the bond fund will ultimately help such immigrants gain anything beyond a few extra months to get their affairs in order before they are ordered deported. Several of the Guatemalans picked up in New Bedford have requested asylum based on dangers they faced as members of persecuted indigenous groups back home. Others are seeking relief from deportation on the grounds that it would cause extreme hardship to their U.S.-born children. Attorneys also pointed to a number of other potential lines of defense, including negotiating a temporary stay of deportation in exchange for testimony against a former employer or, in the case of immigrants who initially entered legally and have a U.S. citizen relative eligible to sponsor them, persuading a judge to let them apply for residency.

Still, the number of people likely to qualify for each type of relief is probably low, said Mark Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors limits on immigration. And he said this suggests that the true goal of the bond fund is to "lawyer up illegal immigrants" and "obstruct enforcement of immigration law until Congress passes an amnesty."

"If the anti-enforcement folks are successful in tying up enough of these hearings, then it will become impossible to do enforcement," he said.