U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reportedly is using GPS-enabled ankle monitors on a relatively small number of illegal migrants.
A June 9 memo ordered ICE staff to place ankle monitors on all people enrolled in the agency’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program “whenever possible,” The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Pregnant women are among those who would be given wrist monitors instead of ankle devices.
“If the alien is not being arrested at the time of reporting, escalate their supervision level to GPS ankle monitors whenever possible and increase reporting requirements,” Dawnisha M. Helland, an acting assistant director in the management of non-detained immigrants, wrote in an internal memo viewed by the Post.
About 183,000 adult migrants are enrolled in ATD and had previously consented to some form of tracking or mandatory check-ins while they waited for their immigration cases to be resolved, according to the newspaper.
ATD enrollments peaked at 378,000 during the migrant surge under then-President Joe Biden.
Ankle monitors are worn by roughly 24,000, about 13% of ATD.
ICE officials have said the agency considers various factors – e.g. criminal history, compliance history, caregiver concerns, and medical concerns – when deciding whether and how to track each immigrant.
ICE spokeswoman Emily Covington told the Post that the administration uses ankle monitors as an “enforcement tool” to ensure compliance with immigration laws.
“More accountability shouldn’t come as a surprise,” Covington said.
She added that ICE makes case-by-case decisions, with officers still having discretion over which participants require ankle or wrist monitors.
Tracking devices are cheaper and arguably more humane than detention. Migrants and their advocates, however, claim the devises invade the privacy of people, many of whom have no criminal record or history of missed court appointments.
“This will be a tool used to extend the reach of the government from just the folks it can manage to put in physical detention to an additional hundreds of thousands more that it can surveil,” said Laura Rivera, an attorney at fit nonprofit Just Futures, a group that has researched ICE tracking technologies.
“It’s designed to turn their own communities and homes into digital cages.”
During a Sunday appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Acting Director Todd Lyons said ICE will prioritize its “limited resources” on arresting “the worst of the worst” aliens, though any migrant in the country illegally could be apprehended in the process.
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