The device is already being used on some families apprehended at the Texas Rio Grande Valley border crossing. The pilot program, known as RGV 50, began on December 1 and will extend to more than 250 families who are caught traveling through the valley if it’s successful, according to the Associated Press.
Because ICE authorities can’t send undocumented immigrants back to their home countries, these individuals are registered in a years-long process known as “Alternatives to Detention Program.” The huge backlog of immigration cases in U.S. courts has created more uncertainty of how to keep a tab on these families.
While an ankle bracelet is more commonly used to keep track of criminals on house arrest, the scale of the new program will likely expand as ICE officials estimate that more than 70% of families fail to report back to immigration authorities once they’re released. The bracelet will be removed once they return to border patrol.
Similar measures have been reportedly used in the past in an effort to keep track of those going through deportation proceedings. The company known as BI Incorporated, which stands for Behavioral Interventions, has monitored immigrants using this device to make sure they show up for immigration court.
In 2011 alone, BI kept a track of more than 35,000 immigrants through this measure.
The recent surge of immigration families entering the United States from Central America has sparked an ongoing debate about the best way to curtail apprehensions with added pressure on the White House. Border patrol agents arrested more than 68,000 immigrants along the Mexican border who were identified as having come with families. An estimated 61,000 of them came from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
Civil rights advocates have condemned the measure in previous cases when it was enforced through BI claiming it unfairly treats them like “criminals.”
“I don’t know why they put it on me. I’ve done everything they’ve asked,” Norma Urbina who is from Honduras told the Boston Globe in a 2013 interview. “I have four children. Where am I going to go?”
An ICE official told the AP that because the families who are apprehended at the border are not a threat to public safety, they qualify to wear the bracelet or use other monitoring programs. In the coming year, ICE expects to monitor about 29,000 immigrants through this GPS tracking device.
It takes $119 per day to detain a person under immigration proceedings. The average cost of the GPS tracking program will be less than other alternative monitoring programs, averaging about $3.50 a day per person, while other measures cost about $4.28 a day, according to the AP.
