Authorities Tether Immigrants to Smartphone App Monitoring Program

U.S. authorities have broadly expanded the use of SmartLink, a smartphone app from BI Inc, a Boulder, Colorado-based subsidiary of private prison company The GEO Group, that was used during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure immigrants released from detention will attend deportation hearings and that now monitors more than 125,000 people, up from around 5,000 less than three years ago, reports the Associated Press. Advocates say the required use of the app, which allows officials to easily check on them by requiring the immigrants to send a selfie or make or receive a phone call when asked, violates immigrants’ privacy and makes them feel they’re not free, deeming it unfair considering many have paid bond to get out of U.S. detention facilities while their cases idle in the country’s backlogged immigration courts.

They also raise concerns about how the U.S. government might use data culled from the app on immigrants’ whereabouts and contacts to round up and arrest others on immigration violations. Initially, SmartLink was seen as a less intensive alternative to ankle monitors for immigrants who had been detained and released, but is now being used widely on immigrants with no criminal history and who have not been detained at all. The program has grown under the Biden administration, which voiced support for alternatives to detention to ensure immigrants attend required appointments such as immigration court hearings while seeking to curb the use of private prisons.