ICE expands use of ankle monitors, aiming to track more than 4.5M migrants roaming streets
Most migrants walking into ICE offices for check-ins are now leaving with ankle monitors or other tracking devices as the Trump administration aims to keep better tabs on the up to 4.5 million likely to be deported, sources told The Post.
The migrants — who crossed the border illegally and used to appear for their regular appointments with ICE once a year while going through the US court system — have been turning up less and less for their scheduled check-ins, fearing the administration’s mass deportation agenda, sources said.
“There’s a new sheriff in town, and we’re not doing things that were being done over the last four years — the agency wants accountability,” a source said.
The migrants required to report to their local ICE offices do not have deportation orders yet but are expected to get the boot for various reasons. They are still expected in immigration court as their cases wind through the system.
The check-ins are there to ensure they’re showing up to immigration court and not committing crimes.
With the new tracking push, ICE will move to send out its agents quickly to try to arrest anyone who cuts off their ankle monitor and potentially charge them with a crime, which wasn’t the case under the Biden administration, sources said.
“During the Biden administration, people absconded, and no one went to look for them. Now that is supposed to change,” the source said.
“Thousands” of ankle monitors are now being “shipped” throughout the US for ICE to massively expand the plan, which is known as the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program and which the Biden administration chose to use less and less.
As of last month, ICE was using devices to track 183,000 migrants. About 18,000 are wearing ankle monitors, while the rest are tracked with wrist-worn devices and a phone application.
Each participant wearing an ankle monitor costs taxpayers roughly $2.75 per day, compared to the daily rate of $152 that it costs to hold each person in detention, according to a source.
ICE is trying to put as many ankle monitors as possible on migrants before they need to move to less restrictive tracking technology, such as a phone app or wrist watch, sources said.
Migrants will be required to check in more frequently when they’re given an ankle monitor, typically every four, eight or 12 weeks.
A source said the need is there to keep migrants “accounted for, since they are absconding and not wanting to report to ICE anymore” as the Trump administration hunts down illegal migrants roaming the country.
It will also free up ICE agents needed for Trump’s mass deportation raids by having migrants check-in with BI Inc., a government contractor that makes and supplies the technology. The contractor will also help migrants to obtain travel documents f they choose to self-deport and return home.
