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ICE Started Ramping Up Its Surveillance Arsenal Immediately After Donald Trump Won
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has called on companies to submit plans on how they would expand ICEs ankle monitors, GPS trackers, biometric check-in technology and human agents for non-citizens, signalling that ICE will expand its surveillance of people awaiting deportation hearings.
- ICE aims to monitor undocumented or unnaturalised people without detaining them. The Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) monitors people who have been in the US for some time and already have a residence.
- ISAP’s parent program, Alternatives to Detention is due to be rebranded as Release and Reporting Management by 2025. ICE has stated there are currently 200,000 participants in the ISAP program.
- ICE has listed requirements for interested companies on how they would store location data and personal information, where their offices would be located, how they would staff agents, and what technology they have for remote surveillance.
- Currently, ICE operates with a combination of ankle monitors and GPS-enabled watches, and apps with facial recognition for ‘biometric’ check-ins.
- A notice posted in 2016 by ICE provided more detail about the 2025 plans, revealing that ICE intended to monitor ‘every single’ non-detained person who is awaiting a court hearing or deportation, with 5.7m people expected to be included.
- The use of ankle monitors offers considerable cost savings compared to detention. According to a government contract database, BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of GEO Group, has held the ISAP contract since 2005.
- The five-year contract, worth $2.2bn, is due to expire next year. Following Trump’s election, GEO Group’s stock was “the single biggest winner in the US stock market - among companies of any size.”
- According to GEO Group CEO Brian Evans the company could increase its ISAP capacity “by several hundreds of thousands of participants, and up to several million if necessary.”
- GEO Group competitor, CoreCivic, also expects to benefit from the expected increase in immigration surveillance. CEO, Damon Hininger, said the timing of the November 6 ICE notice was “probably not a coincidence.”
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