A mobile “app”, a controversial alternative to the shackle for undocumented immigrants in the US

Atlanta (USA), 21 Mar Some 200,000 undocumented immigrants are under electronic surveillance in the United States with a new mobile phone application as part of a controversial program considered by immigrant advocates an unnecessary option to detention, which also violates privacy and lends itself to abuse. Hispanic activists and organizations and human rights defenders believe that, although at first glance it seems better than the electronic shackle, the immigration authorities use it as they please without clear rules. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) confirmed to Efe that 191,988 immigrants are currently being monitored through the Intensive Supervision Program (ISAP), one of the “alternatives to detention” that Joe Biden's government has bet on as a “more humane” option to lockdown. Through the SmartLink smartphone app, ICE officers closely follow in the footsteps of undocumented immigrants, who have to report frequently - some weekly, others daily, even several times a day - and send them a selfie, as Efe found. “Every Tuesday at 11 am I must send an image of my face to immigration,” Danny Sánchez, a Venezuelan asylum seeking lawyer who is being monitored by ICE via SmartLink, told Efe. “However, others have their phone rings every little while to put their picture. It can be in the morning, at night or at any time of day, and they are always afraid to leave the phone aside,” explained the immigrant. Sanchez is one of the thousands of immigrants who have surrendered in recent months at the U.S. border with Mexico and that the authorities have released under ISAP with a cell phone that they themselves provide to him. “I don't know what scope this application can have, I don't know if what I'm talking about is being monitored,” said the Venezuelan father of the family. However, he said he was fortunate that he did not have an electronic shackle with GPS that mistreats the ankle and makes it difficult to get a job because it “causes a phenomenon of discrimination”. The number of immigrants under surveillance through these “Alternatives to Detention” (ATD) programmes rose in less than three years from a few thousand to nearly 200,000, a figure that the Government intends to increase to some 400,000 by the end of the year. “There are serious concerns about the privacy of the app, especially in light of how widely it is now being used,” said Efe Azadeh Shahshahani, legal and advocacy director of Project South. Shahshahani expressed concern about “how the Government could use the data extracted from the app on the location and contacts of immigrants to gather and arrest other members of the community for immigration violations.” “We have seen that in a very short time President Biden's Administration has been expanding this program, which is very harmful, and unfortunately they try to disguise it as if it were an alternative to detention,” told Efe Jacinta González, senior campaign organizer for the national group Mijente. For the activist, it is nothing more than an expansion of the detention system. “It is not a program that has a logical basis, nor systematization, nor clear rules about how it is applied and therefore nothing else becomes another way for immigration agents to abuse their power. They use it as they please,” he adds.