755 people. That's how many immigrants were granted bond from immigration detention in April 2026, down 70% from a year ago. As The Bond Plummet: Is the Supreme Court Next? documents, immigration bond hearings have fallen dramatically, with only 3,067 hearings recorded nationwide in April, a 58% fall from the start of the year. Mobile Pathways' new Bond Tracking dashboard is tracking every number.
This post describes the data behind that decline, and why the methodology behind it matters.
What Hangs on a Bond Hearing
A bond hearing is an important pathway for release from immigration detention while a case moves through court. For many detained immigrants, it is the primary opportunity to seek release from custody while their case is pending. If bond is granted and paid, an individual may be able to return to their community, continue working, and access legal and family support while awaiting a court decision. If bond is denied, or set at an amount they cannot afford, they typically remain detained for the duration of their case, which can last months or, in some instances, years.
Research has found that detained individuals are less likely to obtain legal representation and generally have lower rates of relief or case success than those who are not detained. Some choose voluntary departure rather than remain in detention during prolonged proceedings. Because bond hearings can determine whether someone remains detained while their case proceeds, changes in how often they are held can shape access to release and, in turn, the conditions under which individuals pursue their cases.
Fewer Hearings. Fewer Chances.
The picture that emerges from Mobile Pathways’ latest bond data is hard to ignore. The number of bond hearings dropped sharply in the second half of 2025 and has kept falling. Bond grants declined even more steeply, reaching their lowest level since the start of this administration. This sharp decline in grants reflects both rising denial rates and a dramatic reduction in the number of hearings themselves. Fewer people are getting a hearing, and of those who do, fewer are getting out.
What makes this particularly striking is how closely the data tracks the legal shifts happening in real time. For most of the past year, a person walking into a bond hearing faced roughly a 75% chance of being turned away. The odds worsened after the July 8 DHS memo, which declared that anyone who entered without inspection was ineligible for bond. July 2025 actually saw the most hearings of any month on record, but grant rates were already slipping. By the first full month after the memo took effect, grants had dropped 51% from June and total hearings were down 30%.
When the Board of Immigration Appeals issued Matter of Yajure-Hurtado in September, making that no-bond policy binding nationwide, bond grants actually ticked up 18% the following month rather than falling further. That counterintuitive rebound likely reflects mounting pressure from federal courts, where judges across the country were ordering bond hearings to continue in response to habeas petitions challenging the new policy. Those rulings helped keep bond hearings alive through late 2025.
By early 2026, access to bond hearings narrowed dramatically. In April, only 3,067 bond hearings were recorded, down nearly 40% from March, as courts across multiple circuits closed off access in rapid succession. The Ninth Circuit's stay of Maldonado Bautista neutralized the most prominent ruling keeping hearings alive, while mandatory detention rulings in the Fifth and Eighth Circuits closed off access across much of the country.
As former immigration judge Elizabeth Young puts it, "By April, the legal doors for bond had essentially slammed shut. The Ninth Circuit's stay and a second circuit upholding Yajure-Hurtado hit at the same time. That one-two punch left immigration judges with almost no legal basis to grant bond."
You can see that shift unfold in the data, month by month.
We Measure What’s Happening, Not When it’s Filed
Bond hearing counts can vary depending on one key methodological choice: which date field is used to assign a hearing to a given month. After extensive review by our team — including former Immigration Judge Elizabeth Young, Immigration Attorney Jeffery O'Brien, Esq., and Chief Data Officer Ben Mann — we determined this to be the most effective method for reporting bond hearings, as it mirrors EOIR's own reporting framework.
EOIR's data includes two date fields. The first is the hearing date, the date the bond hearing actually took place before a judge. The second is the administrative completion date, defined by EOIR as the date the immigration judge rendered a decision on the proceeding. That completion date can lag behind the actual hearing by weeks, months, or even years. In February 2026, for example, completions recorded that month included cases with hearing dates stretching back to 2013.
Using the completion date to count monthly hearings does not tell you how many hearings happened that month. It tells you how many administrative records were closed, which is a very different thing. Mobile Pathways uses the hearing date because we are measuring real-time court activity, particularly critical when current policies are actively restricting whether hearings are being scheduled at all.
One point our team is still looking to resolve: some records contain hearing dates with decisions, bond codes, decision codes, and dollar amounts indicating bonds were granted at future dates, which is unexpected. These records are pending further review, and we welcome feedback from other immigration data practitioners and legal experts on how we can better track bond hearings.
Granted on Paper Isn't the Same as Free
Counting hearings is only part of the picture. To measure outcomes, we assessed whether bond was granted using actual bond amount values rather than EOIR's coded decision field. That field carries known data quality issues, including records coded as "Denied" that nonetheless list a bond amount. A case is counted as granted when a non-zero bond amount is recorded, which produces a more precise and auditable measure of who actually received a path to release.
One important caveat: we track whether a bond was set, not whether it was paid. A bond amount that is unaffordable in practice functions as a denial even when technically recorded as granted.
Our grant numbers, if anything, overstate actual release access.
The data is clear: bond hearings are declining, and with them, access to release. This dashboard exists so anyone can see it for themselves.
