The White House is rolling out a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program that will subject asylum-seeking families that cross the U.S. border without authorization to GPS monitoring and a curfew — a move that immigrant advocates say will further criminalize migrants and ultimately expand ICE’s inhumane system of immigrant imprisonment.
The punitive surveillance program, known as Family Expedited Removal Management, comes weeks after the Biden administration announced that it would be enacting an asylum ban that is virtually identical to one proposed by former President Donald Trump. The program is meant to impose “immigration consequences,” according to a statement from ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
The policy applies to families who have indicated an intention to apply for asylum after being placed in a fast-track deportation process upon crossing the border. Once placed in the expedited deportation process, families will be monitored until they receive a credible fear interview. Until then, the family’s head of household will be required to wear a GPS monitor, such as an ankle bracelet, and abide by a curfew from 11 pm to 5 am. If they fail the screening, they will be deported, receive a five-year expulsion, and could face criminal prosecution if they return to the U.S.
Though officials claim that the policy is designed to keep migrant families out of immigrant jails, which have been responsible for the forcible separation of thousands of families, immigrant advocates have said that the electronic monitoring of asylum seekers only further entrenches the U.S.’s system of immigrant imprisonment. Such surveillance has significantly expanded during the Biden administration.
Researchers at Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) have found that ICE is currently monitoring at least 250,000 people and, as of September 2022, using ankle monitors to surveil nearly 41,000 people.
ICE is also currently testing a surveillance pilot project on 50 adult immigrants near Denver, Colorado, using a smartwatch-like tracking device to monitor migrants who are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. Migrants will be forced to wear watches with a GPS feature throughout their entire day, receive messages from ICE officials, and notify ICE if the watch is removed.
Immigrant organizations have demanded that ICE immediately halt the pilot program, saying that it infringes on asylum seekers’ civil liberties and privacy rights.
“Congress and ICE throw away millions every year contracting with for-profit organizations instead of investing in humane and effective ways to streamline our process to welcome others,” said Andrea Loya, executive director of Casa de Paz, an organization whose mission is to reunite families separated by ICE.
The American Friends Service Committee has argued that the Biden administration’s reliance on the Alternatives to Detention program has not actually decreased the number of people imprisoned in immigrant jails.
“Reliance on ATDs is NOT decreasing the number of people in detention. More than 480,000 people have been enrolled in ICE’s ATD program as the number of people in immigration detention and detention funding both continue to increase,” the organization said. “ATD’s are an expansion of detention, not an alternative to it.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 182 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy