The economics of allowing immigrants in, and letting them stay
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Ankle monitors and clunky apps make it hard for immigrants awaiting a hearing to start a life in the U.S. Although advocates argue that there are less intrusive methods, whole businesses exist to electronically surveil migrants. That old saying — people versus profit. Then, we’ll visit Chile, which is historically a destination for South American migrants but has recently tightened its border policies.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The business of electronically tracking immigrants and their families. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm David Brancatio in New York. This week, this program is looking at multiple forces, especially economic forces, shaping migration. |
| 0:15.0 | Under the Biden administration, there's been a rapid expansion of the electronic monitoring of families and individuals waiting for their immigration cases to be resolved. |
| 0:24.0 | This means money for private companies doing the tracking, marketplaces, Elizabeth Troval reports. |
| 0:29.0 | Electronic monitoring has been a boon to Geo Group, the second largest private prison company in the country, says IBIS World Analyst, Alex Petritis. |
| 0:38.0 | Just a year ago, it was 12% of company revenue, and now it's over 20%. |
| 0:45.0 | Geo Group has a $2.2 billion contract with ICE to handle the agency's electronic monitoring of hundreds of thousands of people. |
| 0:54.0 | Danny is one of them. He asked us not to use his last name for fear ICE would retaliate. |
| 1:04.0 | He wore a monitor on his left ankle for three years and spent another two being tracked by smartphone app. |
| 1:11.0 | He left Honduras after gangs targeted his businesses, while waiting for his asylum case, he felt like somehow he was the criminal. |
| 1:20.0 | Parents wouldn't let their kids play with his daughter. |
| 1:26.0 | His ankle monitor battery would last fewer and fewer hours. |
| 1:30.0 | He remembers one night at 3am, waking up to a frantic call from Geo Group after his battery died. |
| 1:38.0 | Calls like this grew more frequent. Then his lawyer helped him get a seemingly less intrusive option, a monitoring app called BI SmartLink. |
| 1:47.0 | It was just a stressful. He didn't trust that the app on his phone wasn't spying on him. |
| 1:54.0 | And he got frustrated with the app failing over and over. |
| 1:58.0 | So how exactly does it work on a Zoom call? |
| 2:02.0 | Houston ICE officer Edward Cainey pulled up the electronic monitoring dashboard with a map showing where someone was at different times of the day. |
| 2:12.0 | This individual here woke up this morning and went straight to work and he's currently still at work. |
| 2:18.0 | The BI SmartLink app also reminds people about important events like court dates, former INS Commissioner Doris Meisner, now with the Migration Policy Institute. |
| 2:28.0 | It's providing migrants themselves with accurate information, a process that can be very confusing. |
| 2:37.0 | Electronic monitoring can improve the likelihood someone shows up to their court dates, but advocates aren't convinced. |
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