Last week, global online-advertising giants Google and Facebook announced that they will no longer accept advertising from bail bonds agencies. In a blog post, Google said its decision to block bail bond ads is part of a broader effort to protect users from damaging content — the same reason it had recently banned ads for payday loans. This development comes just a month after a scathing front page report in The New York Times, which documented the exploitative nature of the for-profit bail bonds industry.

“We made this decision based on our commitment to protect our users from deceptive or harmful products,” said David Graff, Google’s senior director of global product policy. Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of global policy management, added, “Advertising that is predatory doesn’t have a place on Facebook.”

The announcements mark an exciting new phase of the national movement to end money bail — it just went mainstream.

Every year, millions of people in the U.S. are forced to make a choice: pay cash bail after their arrest or face incarceration before trial. This occurs despite the fact that they are presumed innocent and have not been convicted of a crime. To avoid being locked up while their cases go through the courts — which can sometimes take months or even years — people who cannot afford bail must pay a non-refundable fee to a for-profit bail bonds company to front the required bail amount. Even if the charges are dropped a day after the contract is signed with the bail bond company, families are still responsible for this fee, which can be tens of thousands of dollars.

For many others, paying bail is simply not an option. On any given day, there are about 615,000 people incarcerated in local jails in the United States, and 465,000 of them, or a staggering 76 percent of the total jail population, are there awaiting trial. This means that they have not been convicted of a crime, yet they languish in jail cells pretrial, often because they cannot afford cash bail.

The financial burden of this system harms individuals; it harms families; and it disproportionately affects Black and low-income communities. That’s why efforts like the National Bail Out collective — whose crowdfunded #FreeBlackMamas campaign helped ensure dozens of mothers could spend Mother’s Day with their children — exist.

But the extraordinary lengths we must go through in order to stem the tide of mass incarceration underlines a broader question: Why do we have cash bail to begin with when it’s clearly not benefitting our communities?

The only winner in this broken system is the bottom line of for-profit bail bonds businesses and the large insurance corporations, some of them multinational, who underwrite them. All told, the bail bonds industry make about $2 billion a year in profit.

The bail industry justifies its existence by claiming that it keeps Americans safe by ensuring that individuals show up to their court dates. But the truth is that there are alternatives to cash bail, like reminding people about their court dates, that ensure appearance in court and that do not lead to the incarceration of people who can’t pony-up the predatory fees to the bail bonds companies. For example, Washington, D.C., has virtually eliminated money bail yet 90 percent of people released following arrest have made all scheduled court appearances.

If you think that it’s unjust for big corporations to make a profit off people facing incarceration, then you’re not alone. The United States and the Philippines are the only countries in the world that allow companies to operate for-profit bail operations.

To move us towards a system that prioritizes people over prisons or profit, we first need to be able to clearly diagnose the problem. That’s why this announcement from Google and Facebook matters. It’s a sign that the days when the for-profit bail industry could take their cut without being held accountable for their role in fueling mass incarceration are coming to an end.

The big money interests in bail aren’t taking it lightly that Americans and companies like Google and Facebook are beginning to turn on the idea of for-profit bail. They’ve established political action committees that are dedicated to getting politicians who back for-profit bail elected. Certainly, this industry will not go away without a fight. And we have to be ready for it, which is why the ACLU is fighting for bail reform in 38 states right now.

The for-profit bail system fuels mass incarceration and contributes to racial and economic inequalities. One in five people incarcerated in the United States are in jail awaiting trial, haven’t even been convicted of a crime, and are often too poor to afford cash bail. It is a destructive force that undermines the rights of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system, and it must be abolished. Action taken by major companies like Google and Facebook are a step in the right direction.

On Thursday, May 17, the ACLU will be in federal district court to challenge the Trump’s administration’s arbitrary and illegal incarceration of thousands of asylum seekers who fled persecution, torture, or death in their countries of origin. 

For our plaintiffs, and the class members they represent, the chain of events leading to incarceration was the same: They presented themselves to immigration officers, passed screenings, and were found to have credible asylum claims. Then they were locked up in immigration jails across the country. 

All of them applied for “humanitarian parole,” or release from detention, presenting evidence that they were not flight risks or dangers to the community. And yet, ICE denied every request, often with form letters that provided no indication that their applications and supporting documents were taken seriously.

It’s clear that ICE is violating its own policy directive, which instructs that asylum seekers should be granted release provided they meet certain requirements while they await rulings in their cases. The government, however, maintains that each of our plaintiffs and class members did, in fact, receive an “individualized determination” of whether or not they should be released. To support the claim, the government provided a series of “reasons” of why ICE denied our plaintiffs’ parole requests. This is the first time our plaintiffs have been given even anything close to a real explanation for their detention. And they’re only getting those explanations months after their parole requests were denied, in the form of declarations put together by officials seeking to justify their actions after the fact. But let’s look at some of the government’s so-called “determinations.”

Take Mr. Abelardo Asensio Callol, who came to the U.S. fleeing persecution by the Cuban government. ICE denied his parole request because he allegedly had not shown an “ongoing relationship” with the person he would live with outside of detention while he awaits a decision in his asylum case.

The catch? Mr. Callol’s sponsor was his own mother, a green card holder. If Mr. Callol’s parents can’t vouch for him, who can?

What about H.A.Y.? She came to this country with her husband after they received death threats from an armed wing of a criminal cartel in Mexico. The government’s reason for denying her release is that she is a “recent entrant.” Literally everyone who comes to the U.S. border seeking asylum is, by definition, a “recent entrant.”

And then there’s Mr. Ansly Damus, the lead plaintiff of the lawsuit, who has been locked up for more than a year and a half — and counting. An ethics teacher from Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, Haiti, Mr. Damus criticized a local official for corruption in one of his seminars. Afterwards, an armed gang who supports that official brutally attacked him before setting his motorcycle on fire and threatening to kill him. Mr. Damus fled to the United States, where he presented himself to immigration authorities and applied for asylum. A judge granted him asylum — not once, but twice. He has not committed any crimes and has shown ICE that he had a safe place to live after he was released.

ICE’s reason for denying him parole was that he didn’t have “sufficient ties” to the United States. For one thing, that’s not even true – Mr. Damus showed that he had a friend with lawful status whom he could live with, as well as letters of support from other community members.

Second, every asylum seeker who comes to the border, again, by definition does not have “ties” to this country. And if they’re never released from detention, they will never get the chance to build those “ties.”

The arbitrary imprisonment of people like Mr. Callol, H.A.Y., and Mr. Damus are part of the administration’s larger strategy of deterring immigrants from seeking refuge, even though our laws permit them to.

There can be no other plausible explanation for ICE’s dramatic shift from granting parole in more than 90 percent of cases to denying parole for asylum seekers in nearly every case. This same cruel and abusive deterrence strategy underlies tactics like brutally separating parents from their children and criminally prosecuting individuals who cross the border to seek asylum.

In order to further the Trump’s administration’s anti-immigrant agenda, ICE is holding asylum seekers to criteria that they can never meet. Their justifications for denying parole are painfully transparent, and the court should see through them.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled today that the Prevent Sanctuary Cities initiative petition is deceptive and misleading and violates Nevada law because it fails to inform voters of its true effects.

In response to this victory, ACLU of Nevada Legal Director, Amy Rose, said:

“We’re thrilled the Court recognized this petition’s deceptive nature. This is a victory for Nevada’s immigrant communities and also for Nevada voters, who deserve to know exactly what they’re signing when endorsing a petition that would alter the Nevada Constitution.”

The ACLU of Nevada and the law firm Perkins Coie brought suit challenging the Prevent Sanctuary Cities initiative petition in November. The Prevent Sanctuary Cities PAC initiated this appeal after the District Court found the petition violated Nevada law.

What happens next?

The case will be sent back to the District Court in Carson City to remedy the misleading language of the petition’s description of effect. Proponents of this anti-immigrant measure will have to start over and craft a new description that sufficiently informs voters of the petition’s impact before they can begin to gather signatures. The Nevada Supreme Court’s order invalidates any signatures that were collected prior.