Biden’s Immigration “Fix” Involves Jailing Migrants in Their Homes

The Biden administration is launching a new program of digital incarceration – otherwise known as electronic monitoring or e-carceration — for migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a report from ReutersCiting the Department of Homeland Security. The program, which will involve confining migrants through electronic monitors, is officially called “home curfew,” and is expected initially to include 164,000 people, but could expand to include up to 400,000. It will be administered by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary to the private prison giant GEO Group. Critics of the program include immigrants advocates who claim that home surveillance continues the criminalization of migrants and further cements the for-profit immigration enforcement industry.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (with 24 other members of Congress) delivered a speech Wednesday. letterDHS opposed the e-carceration program, including the new home curfew requirements. The elected officials were joined by 176 humanitarian organizations, which collectively wrote that “ICE has excessively deployed” electronic surveillance measures on “immigrants who would not otherwise have been detained.” They also criticized the program’s massive budgetary increases, from $28 million in 2006 to $475 million in 2021.

The news further shows that the Biden administration is not seeking to change Trump’s approach to border enforcement but is instead attempting to retool some of its existing elements. Perhaps most controversially, Biden has embraced Trump’s use of a World War II-era law called Title 42 that allows border agents to expel migrants and asylum seekers immediately with no access to the courts to plead their case. Biden’s administration has also defended Trump’s family separation policy in court, as well as Title 42 enforcement. Immigrant detention numbers skyrocketed during Biden’s first year in office to nearly 27,000 in detention in July 2021, though the numbers fellIn 2022, the current number is around 20,000. Trump held a August 2019 inauguration record55,000 immigrants are currently in detention

However, as of February 1, about 182,000 immigrants are confined in some form of “alternative to detention” — mostly involving various types of electronic monitoring — through ICE. This number is increasing from83,000 in September 2019. It’s not clear how many of the migrants subjected to the new house arrest program will come from existing programs and how many will be newly added. The Biden administration has massively expanded DHS’s so-called Alternative to Detention (ATD) programs, which include the new home confinement initiative, and consists primarily of using surveillance technology like electronic ankle shackles. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is also available. usesFace and voice recognition technology are used to track migrants. Privacy advocates argue that this software is often unreliable and racist. It allows the government bulk surveillance, which is not permitted by the criminal justice system.

In other areas, Biden has moved away from some of Trump’s most aggressive policies. His administrationBiden has stopped worksite enforcement actions (raids) and also ended long term family detention, which had been in effect to varying degrees since 2001. After Trump’s revocation of those protections, Biden extended temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrant residents in the United States.

Still, the administration’s new embrace of the home confinement program appears to exemplify Biden’s muddled and contradictory approach. On the campaign trail, Biden promised to “end for-profit detention centers,” arguing “[n]o business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence.” In his first weeks in office, Biden signed an executive order that required the Department of Justice not to renew contracts with private prison companies, though immigrant detention facilities were exempted. As of September 2021 nearly 80 percentACLU research shows that approximately 80% of detained immigrants were kept in for-profit facilities. This number is almost unchanged from January 2020 when Trump was still in power. The expansion of electronic monitoring will allow for-profit companies to reach a wider audience.

Importantly, the fact private companies are gaining from the program is not a cause of the increase in digital incarceration. Ruth Wilson Gilmore and others have pointed out. The crisis is being driven by structural injustices, racist, xenophobic or classist policy making. Private companies are reaping some the benefits.

The pilot programs will be in Baltimore and Houston. The program will expand nationally later in the year, according to Axios.The program’s specific details are still unclear. However, the program will require that the migrants under its control are subject to more stringent oversight and compliance than standard ATD protocols. In general, it will requireElectronic monitoring enforces that migrants must remain at home between 8 and 8 pm.

Migrants and their advocates are often very critical of the ankle monitors they’re forced to wear, sometimes for months or years at a time while they wait for their court hearing date. Common complaintsAre the ankle shackles required? grilleteThey are visible when the wearers go to work, grocery shop, or pick up their children from school. This reinforces the stigma that immigrants are dangerous or violent, as many migrants call them.

The devices will need to be charged in many cases. This can create scheduling issues for people who are often unable to control their own schedules. The shackles can cause skin irritation and make it difficult to shower or bathe. They have been used to assist in the removal of hair. known to issue pre-recorded verbal commands to their wearers, “reminding” them of mandated check-in dates. Surprise orders can be disorienting, embarrassing, or even dangerous if they are given in a public environment.

GEO Group was founded by its subsidiary BI Incorporated. reportedlyThe program was launched with a federal contract worth $2.2 billion in 2020. However, the companies claim that the actual contract was less. The company’s stock fell recently because of the expanded program. booming during Trump’s first year in office. The company recentlyRestructured to meet debt obligations.

Immigrants’ rights advocates have criticized GEO Group, and its main private prison competitor CoreCivic, for years, arguing that their facilities are poorly maintained, dangerous, expensive and unnecessary. Even when it comes to deaths in custody, federal oversight of the facilities is very limited. A research paperFrom 2021, it was found that 55 of the 71 deaths in ICE facilities between 2011 and 2018 were not covered by the Office of Detention Oversight. 34 of those 55 deaths occurred in for-profit institutions.

As with all jails and prisons in the country, immigrant detention centres have been plagued with COVID since the start of the pandemic. Last year, a federal judge extended protections to immigrants held at the Mesa Verde facility near Bakersfield, California, after finding that ICE and GEO Group hadn’t created any procedures to protect detainees from the spread of COVID in the facility. “[T]he conduct of key ICE and GEO officials in charge of operations at Mesa Verde has been appalling,” Judge Vince Chhabria wroteAll in one.

By deepening GEO Group and BI Incorporated’s role in immigration enforcement through the new e-carceration program, the Biden administration is trying to find a technocratic fix for a political problem. It has tried to reduce the number of detention facilities, but it has used a contradictory and conflicting approach, as in many other areas. There’s no reason why the administration can’t take bold measures toward actually ending detention. Instead, the Biden administration seems to be trying to appease its political enemies by sticking to a strict approach. The result will be more surveillance and stigmatizing of migrants, and further entrenchment of the for-profit immigration-industrial complex into the country’s approach to border crossing.