Trump Administration Orders Massive Expansion of GPS Ankle Monitors for Immigrants

Ankle monitors could double taxpayer costs to $500,000 per day despite nearly 100% compliance for people in ICE's alternatives to detention program.

A troubling new Washington Post report reveals that the Trump administration has quietly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to dramatically expand the use of GPS ankle monitors, potentially shackling an additional 160,000 immigrants with electronic tracking devices.

According to an internal ICE memo dated June 9 and obtained by The Washington Post, the agency has directed staff to place ankle monitors on all people enrolled in its Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program "whenever possible." This represents a sharp departure from recent trends and a return to the more punitive surveillance technologies that defined earlier eras of immigration enforcement.

I've been tracking ICE's electronic monitoring program closely for years, documenting everything from data quality problems to the rapid growth of smartphone-based surveillance technologies. You can find my previous analysis on this topic here. But I haven't written much recently about ATD because the major changes in immigration enforcement have come from other parts of the system.

This latest development represents a particularly concerning shift back toward the most invasive forms of immigrant surveillance, and it raises important questions about both the human impact of these technologies and the broader implications for digital surveillance in American society. In this post, I will bring you up to speed with the basics of what you need to know to understand the latest news and policy on this important immigration-related development.

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Understanding ICE's Electronic Monitoring Tech

For readers new to this topic, it's important to understand what we're actually talking about when we discuss ICE's monitoring technologies. Despite the agency's continued use of the misleading phrase "Alternatives to Detention," what ICE actually operates is an electronic monitoring program that tracks immigrants using four main technologies.

(1) GPS Ankle Monitors: These are the black, bulky devices strapped to people's ankles that provide real-time location tracking. At six ounces—about the weight of an iPhone—they're prone to glitches, have reportedly poor battery life, and often leave bruises or rashes on wearers. As one former participant described it: "It makes you feel like you are really a bad person. It really gets into your psyche and really damages your soul."

A note on terminology: I deliberately use the term "ankle monitor" or "ankle shackle" rather than "ankle bracelet." The word "bracelet" suggests jewelry or ornamentation, which obscures the coercive and punitive nature of these devices. They are shackles—instruments of constraint and control. Even The Washington Post article reporting this expansion uses the misleading term "ankle bracelets," which demonstrates how pervasive this euphemistic language has become in media coverage.

(2) SmartLINK: This smartphone app uses facial recognition and geolocation technology to monitor migrants. People must take selfies at random times throughout the day and are "always scared to be without their phone," as one Venezuelan asylum seeker told reporters. SmartLINK has been the fastest-growing monitoring technology in recent years, currently tracking about 154,000 people.

(3) VeriWatch: GPS-enabled wrist-worn devices that function similarly to ankle monitors but are worn on the wrist. According to the Washington Post memo, pregnant women would be required to wear these devices instead of ankle monitors. Currently used for approximately 2,750 people. See my previous discussion of VeriWatch when it was launched in early 2023: “ICE On My Wrist: Immigrants Will Start Wearing Electronic Monitoring Watches This Month.“

(4) Telephonic Reporting: The oldest technology, requiring people to call in at scheduled intervals for voice verification using biometric voiceprints. Currently used for approximately 1,200 people.

As I've documented extensively, the agency has steadily moved away from ankle monitors over the past few years in favor of smartphone-based tracking, making this recent return to ankle monitors all the more significant.

Why Are Immigrants Placed on Electronic Monitoring?

Immigrants may be placed on electronic monitoring at various stages of their immigration proceedings. Under the Biden administration, many individuals who entered the U.S. through humanitarian parole, or who presented themselves at the border to seek asylum, were enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. These individuals were often assigned monitoring technologies such as the SmartLINK smartphone app, particularly during the early stages of their process.

This means that a large portion of those currently being monitored electronically have active and pending cases before U.S. immigration courts, and many of them seeking asylum or other forms of humanitarian protection. Others in the ATD program may have already received a final order of removal but remain in the country due to logistical, legal, or humanitarian reasons and have not yet been deported.

Current Data on ICE’s ATD Enrollment

The latest data on immigrant enrollment in ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program show that overall numbers have remained remarkably flat since July 2023. While today’s enrollment levels are nearly double what they were during the Trump administration, they are still far below the peak of approximately 375,000 people monitored at one time near the end of 2022, when the Biden administration’s use of the SmartLINK app was at its highest.

Although the overall enrollment remains steady, there has been a slight decline in the use of SmartLINK and a gradual, consistent increase in the use of GPS ankle monitors since the start of Trump’s second term. That said, the number of people on ankle monitors has fluctuated over the past several years, and recent increases, while noteworthy, are still well below historic highs. Keep these graphics in mind when I discuss how the Washington Post represents the data below.

I’ll continue to track the number of individuals on GPS monitoring. If ICE dramatically expands the use of ankle monitors, as recent policy shifts suggest it might, we can expect to see significant growth in these numbers in the months ahead.

GPS Ankle Monitor Expansion Could Cost Taxpayers $500,000 Per Day

If the Trump administration succeeds in its push to place everyone in ICE’s ATD program on GPS ankle monitors, the cost to taxpayers could exceed $500,000 per day—a sharp increase from the program’s current daily cost of approximately $230,000.

Currently, about 183,000 people are enrolled in ICE's ATD program, with approximately 24,600 wearing ankle monitors as of the most recent data. The Trump administration's directive to place GPS devices on participants "whenever possible" could mean shackling an additional 158,000 people.

Here’s a breakdown of the per-person, per-day costs by monitoring type:

• Telephonic check-ins: $0.18

• SmartLINK (smartphone app): $0.96

• GPS ankle monitors: $2.74

• VeriWatch (wrist-worn device): $4.50

Although SmartLINK currently drives the largest share of costs due to high enrollment, ankle monitors are significantly more expensive per person. If ICE transitions everyone on SmartLINK and other technologies to GPS ankle monitors, daily operating costs would balloon to $500,932, more than doubling the program’s current expenses.

This doesn’t appear to be an outlandish projection, either. As the Washington Post reported, Acting Assistant Director Dawnisha M. Helland wrote: "If the alien is not being arrested at the time of reporting, escalate their supervision level to GPS ankle monitors whenever possible and increase reporting requirements."

Following the Money

As always, it's worth noting who benefits from this expansion. The entire ATD program is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of Geo Group—the private prison conglomerate that has donated over $1.5 million to Trump's 2024 campaign and inaugural committee.

Each ATD participant generates about $3.70 in revenue per day for Geo Group. A rapid expansion to 180,000 people wearing ankle monitors could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue annually.

Geo Group has already told investors it has "ramped up production of ankle monitors" and is prepared to potentially track millions of immigrants. The company's CEO said they are "very well positioned" to meet this "opportunity."

It's also worth noting that Tom Homan, Trump's border czar who is championing this expansion, previously earned consulting fees from Geo Group according to recent ethics disclosures. While Homan has said he will recuse himself from contract decisions, the broader relationship between the administration and the detention industry remains close.

ICE's History of Data Problems with GPS Ankle Monitors

As we try to analyze what the expansion of ankle monitors might mean, it's worth remembering ICE's troubling history with GPS ankle monitor data. In late 2022, I was tracking what appeared to be a dramatic surge in GPS usage, from around 10,000 to nearly 60,000 people. This seemed like a major policy reversal worth documenting.

But after publishing that analysis, DHS informed me that ICE had been miscalculating the GPS ankle monitor data for months. The true numbers, they claimed, were closer to 8,000—not 60,000.

This wasn't just a simple error. The agency's miscalculation, or its failure to catch BI’s misrepresentation of the data, persisted over several months in a way that made it appear logical and incremental, making it difficult to catch. Even once the agency identified the issue, they refused to fix the problem by providing corrected data for that time period. That’s why I still note this period in red on my ATD data graphic.

Although I haven’t noted issues with that data recently, a sudden expansion of ATD may raise the likelihood of, and the stakes of, data quality issues at ICE.

The Return of "Hardware"

What's particularly concerning about this development is that it represents a regression to older, more punitive technologies. Over the past few years, ICE had been moving away from GPS ankle monitors in favor of SmartLINK. The current data shows this trend clearly: while about 154,000 people are monitored through SmartLINK, only around 24,600 wear GPS ankle monitors.

This shift made sense from ICE's perspective: SmartLINK is cheaper to operate and can scale more easily than physical devices. But the Trump administration's new directive signals a deliberate choice to return to more invasive "hardware," as ICE officials reportedly call it.

This regression may be partly political. Republican politicians and conservative media have spent years mischaracterizing SmartLINK as "free smartphones" for migrants, despite the fact that the devices are strictly for monitoring purposes and cannot browse the internet or make personal calls. Donald Trump marveled at rallies that migrants "all have cellphones," asking "where did they get the cellphones?" Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity warned that Biden was "facilitating the arrival of these illegals, including free flights, free cellphones and free everything else."

The irony is that SmartLINK, which actually began under the Trump administration in 2018, has been quite effective as a monitoring tool, with the vast majority of immigrants, typically over 99%, complying with all requirements. But the political narrative of "free phones for migrants" may have made it untenable for the new administration to embrace smartphone-based monitoring, even though ankle shackles are more expensive, more cumbersome, and more harmful to the people forced to wear them.

Is ATD an “Alternative”?

This latest development underscores why I've argued for years that we should be cautious when using ICE's preferred term "Alternatives to Detention." As I've written before, the evidence shows this program operates as an addition to rather than an alternative to detention.

This isn’t a hot take. ICE’s own description of ATD emphasizes that it is not an alternative to detention, but rather an alternative to unsupervised release from detention—i.e., an expansion of surveillance rather than a reduction in detention space.

The Trump administration's expansion makes this even clearer. People like Paola, who have demonstrated compliance with immigration proceedings for years, are being subjected to escalated surveillance without justification. This isn't about ensuring court appearances—it's about expanding state control over immigrant communities.

Why We Should Use the Term “Electronic Monitoring” Instead of “Alternatives to Detention”

Is ATD Enrollment “Consensual”?

The Washington Post describes these migrants as having "consented" to electronic monitoring.

“About 183,000 adult migrants are enrolled in ATD and had previously consented to some form of tracking or mandatory check-ins while they waited for their immigration cases to be resolved.” (Emphasis added.)

This framing, while it does reflect how ICE describes it, obscures the coercive nature of this supposed consent. For consent to be authentically given, it must be given freely—not under duress or with the threat of other harsher consequences hanging over their heads.

It’s not even as straightforward as ICE giving each person a choice to either accept electronic monitoring or remain in detention. ICE chooses which immigrants to enroll into electronic monitoring and which type of device they will have to use. Immigrants enrolled in ATD simply do not have the freedom to make a real choice, to truly “consent” to ATD.

ICE’s claims about immigrants “consenting” to ATD does not represent the reality of how ATD works, so I would warn against repeating this uncritical and generally inaccurate phrasing.

A Data Literacy Note on Media Coverage

Since ATD is likely to receive more media coverage following this Washington Post report, it's worth emphasizing how this data should be interpreted and presented.

The Washington Post article includes an ATD visualization that I commend for its clarity and simplicity. Data visualization for public readership is an under-appreciated art and science, and the Post's graphics team generally does excellent work.

That said, I have two concerns about how the data was presented. First, the graphic incorrectly identifies the date of the data. It cites January 16 as the date, but this isn't accurate. January 16 is the date in the filename of ICE's detention spreadsheet, but the actual date when the ATD data was current was January 11. This may seem minor, but each sub-dataset in ICE's detention spreadsheet is current on different dates. If you're tracking this data rigorously over time—as we do at TRAC—getting these dates right is crucial for proper validation, archiving, and analysis.

Second, the graphic uses what I would describe as an artificially constrained time frame that doesn't capture longer trends. The chart emphasizes recent fluctuations without putting them in the context of the past several years. This isn't misleading per se, but it violates a principle of data literacy I think is important: more argumentative graphics should be shown only after establishing comprehensive context.

When I publish graphics about immigration enforcement trends, I typically prefer to show long-term, global trends first, then zoom in on specific periods or dramatic changes. This ensures readers are working with complete information before being presented with more selective framings.

What's Next

According to the Washington Post reporting, ICE has already begun implementing this directive. About 50 migrants were seen at an ICE field office in Chantilly, Virginia, waiting to be fitted with tracking devices, with officials saying "Everybody in here needs to either wear hardware or be detained."

There are questions about whether Geo Group can actually scale up production quickly enough to meet the administration's demands. The company has historically limited manufacturing by recycling old devices, and much of its current supply is reportedly old and in poor condition.

Whatever happens, I'll follow trends and the data right here, so don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already.

Additional Reading

If you're interested in learning more about this critical issue, these resources offer excellent starting points for further reading:

• American Bar Association, Electronic Monitoring of Migrants: Punitive not Prudent (2024)

• American Immigration Council, Alternatives to Immigration Detention: An Overview (July 2023)

• Department of Homeland Security, Privacy Impact Assessment for the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) Program (DHS Reference No. DHS/ICE/PIA-062) (2023)

• DeStefano, S. Unshackling the Due Process Rights of Asylum-Seekers. (2019).

• Detention Watch Network, The Case Against “Alternatives To Detention” (2022)

• Government Accountability Office, Alternatives to Detention: ICE Needs to Better Assess Program Performance and Improve Contract Oversight (2022)

• Giustini et al. Immigration Cyber Prisons: Ending the Use of Electronic Ankle Shackles (Cardozo Law School, 2021)

• Hsu, Jeremy, Privacy flaws in US monitoring apps: Apps used by US authorities to track immigrants require “dangerous permissions” (New Scientist, 2022)

• Kilgore, James, Understanding E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring, The Surveillance State, and the Future of Mass Incarceration (The New Press, 2022)

• López, Iván Chaar, Alien Data: Immigration and Regimes of Connectivity in the United States (Critical Ethnic Studies, 2020)

• Schmitt, Calli, The Reality of America’s Inhumane Alternatives to Detention Program (Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice Blog, 2022)

• Sherman-Stokes, Sarah, Detention Abolition and the Violence of Digital Cages (SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022)

• Villa-Nicholas, Melissa, Data body milieu: the Latinx immigrant at the center of technological development (Feminist Media Studies, 2020)

• Zampierin, Sara, Mass E-Carceration: Electronic Monitoring as a Bail Condition (Utah Law Review, 2023)

Support Public Scholarship

This newsletter is only possible because of your support. If you believe in keeping this work free and open to the public, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can read more about the mission and focus of this newsletter and learn why, after three years, I finally decided to offer a paid option. If you already support this newsletter financially, thank you.