One thing that I think is extremely important down here in Brownsville and any border city really is a whole lot of criminal defendants who aren’t here legally. They’re undocumented. And it becomes a race to get a bond sometimes before the ICE immigration people get to the jail. But if they get there, you get a federal hold on you.
So any state bond is trumped by the federal hold. So you have a lot undocumented immigrants here doing hard work– working, have families here that are stuck in jail. What’s important from the immigration consequences is if you plead guilty to a crime involving moral turpitude, for instance, an assault case with finding a family violence, you’re deportable.
What that means is that you’re placed back in your country. And if you cross again within a certain time period, you’re facing federal charges. So it’s important that people get somebody who cares to represent them if you’re an undocumented person in this country.