The Biden administration is contemplating an extended home detention and curfew pilot program for immigrants seeking asylum or other protection in U.S. immigration courts, according to Axios.
National Immigration Project (NIPNLG), National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), Detention Watch Network, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC, Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI), Human Rights First (HRF), Community Change Action, and FIRM Action issued the following statement in response to Axios’ reporting.
The Biden administration breached pledges to immigrant communities yet again this week, with the announcement of an impending pilot program to experiment with more “stricter” immigration surveillance than is now in place. For 164,000 people, the pilot would entail home arrest, curfews, and electronic monitoring. We have no reason to expect that, despite being portrayed as a “alternative to imprisonment,” this severe “e-incarceration” program would reduce the number of detention facilities or the number of individuals incarcerated in them. In reality, it would put hundreds of thousands of immigrants under ICE’s jurisdiction for the first time. It also clearly contradicts what the immigrant rights movement has demanded: the abolition of all forms of immigration detention.
Make no mistake about it: surveillance technology enhances the carceral state and inevitably perpetuates oppressive tendencies. The ICE plan is part of a troubling national trend of increased monitoring of Black and brown communities in the name of public safety. Furthermore, reports have shown that immigrants subjected to e-incarceration, including the use of GPS-enabled ankle monitors, suffer serious physical and mental health harm; lose access to vital economic opportunities for extended periods of time; and remain at risk of sudden incarceration in a detention facility.
By funneling millions of federal cash to private corporations to deploy monitoring equipment, this new e-incarceration scheme would reproduce the terrible incentives of private prisons. We will only see the same heinous cycle repeat itself, with private corporations once again fighting for punitive and demeaning regulations in order to boost their profit margins.
President Biden campaigned on a commitment to reduce incarceration and eliminate private prisons, which include immigration detention centers, but has so far failed to deliver. Instead, the number of persons detained for immigration violations has risen since he assumed office. Biden must keep his pledges and act quickly to phase down the use of immigration detention, rather than increasing the number of individuals under ICE’s control.