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 Reuters citing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 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 run by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison giant GEO Group. Immigrant advocates have criticized the program, arguing that home surveillance continues to criminalize migrants and further entrenches the for-profit immigration enforcement industry.
On Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and 24 other Members of Congress delivered a
letter to DHS opposing the e-carceration programs, 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 is further evidence that the Biden administration is primarily seeking to retool some aspects of border enforcement, rather than adopt an approach that radically breaks with that of Donald Trump and his predecessors. 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. The Biden 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
fell in 2022 and currently stand at around 20,000. In August 2019, Trump held a
record 55,000 immigrants in detention.
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GEO Group, and its subsidiary BI Incorporated, was
reportedly awarded a $2.2 billion federal contract in 2020 to launch the program, though the companies have said the actual contract was lower. The expanded program could be a boon to the company, whose stock has fallen recently after
booming during Trump’s first year in office. The company
recently restructured to meet its debt obligations, dropping its status as a real estate investment trust, a business classification that includes companies that own office buildings and shopping centers.
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. Federal oversight into the facilities is limited, even when it comes to in-custody deaths. A
research paper from 2021 found that of the 71 people died in ICE facilities from 2011 to 2018, the Office of Detention Oversight only collected information on 55 of them. Of those 55 deaths, 34 occurred in for-profit facilities.