Immigrants in ICE Detention were Donated Monero by Crypto Initiatives

According to a tweet posted by a Bail Bloc co – founder on Nov. 15, the Bail Bloc initiative has started using cryptocurrency raised through charity to help people get out of U.S. immigrants and customs enforcement (ICE) pretrial incarceration.

The mission of ICE which is a law enforcement agency of the federal government of the U.S. is to monitor cross – border crime and illegal immigration. The agency conducted 143,470 overall administrative arrests, 92 percent of which resulted in a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge in 2017.

The people arrested in these crimes are required to pay an immediate bond in exchange for their immediate – term release in ICE, although only 97% of those people in detention are given a bond hearing. Those who cannot afford to pay the bond, or who are not granted a bail at all ,must wait for their court hearing while detained, which could last from months to years.

Through cryptocurrency Bail Bloc is trying to help charged immigrants to pay for their bill with the money raised from it. The initiative has come up with an app that consumes a small portion – from 10% by default to 50% optionally – of users computer power to mine Monero (XMR) once it is installed.

Bail Bloc has reportedly mined 44.34 XMR which equates to $7,356.36 U.S.dollars. This sum is enough to bail out 12 people as per the organization’s website. The organization states that at the end of every month , it exchanges XMR for dollars and donates the earnings to the immigrants Bail Fund in New Haven, Connecticut.

Bail Bloc says it chose XMR as it is an ASIC – resistant cryptocurrency , meaning that consumer – level computers are able to mine the coin ” in a financial viable way.” which computers designed with the sole purpose of crypto mining cannot.

A significant controversy has been sparked by ICE’s approach to immigrant policy enforcement. A report says federal authorities has lost track of nearly 1500 immigrant children in their custody. As the Washington post reported, the children had been separated from their immigrant parents. According to the policy of prosecuting ” 100 percent” of those crossing the border illegaly, children were separated from their parents as the adults were charged with a crime.

The coin’s market capitalization is around $1.4 billion while its trading volume is about $18.9 million. At press time, XMR is trading at around $87, down by 0.82 percent over the past 24 hours.