The Other Bailout Plan

Bob Hildreth, a graying, soft-spoken Boston banker, recently found himself surrounded by devil midgets, balloons, and scantily clad women. Anything but a regular on Sábado Gigante, the manic Spanish-language variety show, he'd flown to Miami to appear on the program alongside a Guatemalan immigrant named Luis.

Luis (who asked that his last name not be used) had been arrested by federal immigration agents in March 2007, along with 359 other employees at the Michael Bianco leather factory in New Bedford. After Luis was packed off to a Texas detention center, Hildreth volunteered to help pay his $27,000 bail bond. Making bail is the difference between a detainee's being shipped out of the country and appearing before a judge. "He was days from being deported," Hildreth says. Now, it looks as if Luis will be granted asylum.

Luis isn't the only one to benefit from Hildreth's largesse. A week after the New Bedford raid, Hildreth suggested to Greater Boston Legal Services—the group at the forefront of a post-raid legal battle with the feds—that if the detainees' families could front half their bond money, he'd cover the rest. Eventually he bailed out 40 individuals, at a cost of about $120,000.

Each time a detainee's case is resolved, Hildreth will get his cash back, which he pledges to turn over to GBLS for use in future cases. But, realizing the funds may sit largely untapped if reserved solely for Massachusetts ("If you don't have a raid," Hildreth explains, "you don't have a chance to use the money"), GBLS expanded the concept. Last spring it used his pledge to help found the National Immigrant Bond Fund. Boosted by a fundraising drive in August, it has already bailed out people arrested in immigration raids in California, Maryland, and Mississippi. Ali Noorani, who runs the National Immigration Forum, thinks the fund is a model that will be used for years to come, calling it "a surprisingly simple and effective solution" to a thorny issue.