Human Rights Groups Call for an End to Digital Surveillance of Immigrants

By Kari Paul, Guardian UK

01 June 21

The Biden administration and the immigration agency tracks more than 96,000 immigrants, using tactics that ‘inhibit progress’

uman rights groups are calling on the Biden administration and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to put an end to a digital surveillance program that keeps tabs on nearly nearly 100,000 immigrants.

A new report called Ice Digital Prisons, authored by the Latinx organizing group Mijente and immigration legal rights group Just Futures Law, highlights how Ice uses apps, GPS-tracking ankle monitors and facial recognition software to monitor people – saying these tactics “do more harm and inhibit any true progress in providing the social and economic tools for immigrants to thrive in their communities”.

The report says that the use of such technologies further criminalizes immigrants and affects their social and economic wellbeing.

The Biden administration is under growing pressure to right the wrongs of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and keep families out of detention facilities. One of its solutions has been to stress the importance of funding digital methods for tracking immigrants rather than physically imprisoning them. The digital alternatives program has been growing in recent years, with funding increasing from $28m in 2006 to $440m in 2021.

The “alternatives to detention” program tracks 96,574 individuals, but the Biden administration’s 2022 budget request calls to increase that number by approximately 45,000 to 140,000.

These alternatives “support migrants as they navigate their legal obligations”, the Biden administration has said, and are meant to be less-harmful alternatives to physical detention. But Julie Mao, an immigration attorney with Just Futures Law and an editor on the report, said that is not the case.

“There are so many ways ankle shackles cause physical and emotional harm for folks,” she said. “It’s deeply stigmatizing to have the ankle monitor, it can create sores, it must be charged often. Having that on you 24/7 creates a huge mental strain on people.”

In addition to ankle monitors, immigrants are forced to consent to unscheduled home and office visits, check in with immigration officials via a smartphone app or over the phone, or some combination of all three as part of the program.

One such app, called SmartLINK, requires immigrants to check in by uploading a selfie for facial recognition while confirming their location. The app “raises a number of privacy and surveillance concerns” the study says, as it has the ability to monitor user location in real time.

Despite being put forward as an alternative, the report underscored that digital surveillance can, in many cases, ultimately lead to real-life detention, due to minor mistakes made in the app or technology issues with an immigrant’s required check-in.

Ice has, in some cases, used data from the alternatives to detention program to track down immigrants for arrest. In 2019, historical data from ankle bracelets was used to raid Koch Foods in Mississippi, resulting in the arrest of more than 600 individuals.

“Policymakers and advocates should reject calls to invest in carceral alternatives to detention programs and focus on solutions that put an end to all forms of immigrant surveillance and detention,” the report said.