The Trump administration is dramatically escalating its surveillance of immigrants through a shocking expansion of GPS monitors that were specifically designed to track cattle, according to internal White House documents obtained by The Washington Post.
In a June 9 memo, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered staff to slap ankle monitors on all participants in its Alternatives to Detention program "whenever possible" — potentially forcing an additional 159,000 migrants into electronic shackles.
The directive represents a massive expansion from the current 24,000 immigrants already wearing the devices, turning their homes and communities into what advocates call "digital cages.”
"This will be a tool used to extend the reach of the government from just the folks it can manage to put in physical detention to an additional hundreds of thousands more that it can surveil," warned Laura Rivera, a senior attorney at Just Futures, to the Post.
"It's designed to turn their own communities and homes into digital cages."
The monitors will be fastened to the ankles of people in the program, who have agreed to surveillance as their cases are processed — but the memo says pregnant women can have them fastened to their wrists.
The policy has blindsided immigrants like Paola, a 29-year-old Honduran mother who fled an abusive husband four years ago. Despite attending every court hearing and complying with check-ins while awaiting her asylum case, she was suddenly ordered to wear an ankle monitor due to "new laws."
"Maybe they've taken these drastic steps because many people don't show up to court," Paola told The Post. "But some of us do everything right and still get treated the same."
The expansion represents a windfall for the Geo Group, the private prison giant that employs Trump's border czar Tom Homan as a consultant and donated more than $1.5 million to Trump's campaign. The company's subsidiary BI Inc. — a business that was set up to monitor cattle — runs the entire tracking program.
"We have taken several important steps to be prepared to meet that opportunity, and we are very well positioned," Geo CEO David Donahue said to investors in May, revealing the company is prepared to track "millions of immigrants."
The bulky devices weigh as much as an iPhone and prone to causing rashes and bruises, the Post reported.
"It makes you feel like you are really a bad person," said Michael Langa, who wore one for eight months. "It really gets into your psyche and really damages your soul."