Private prison company to test U.S. house arrest program for immigrants
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[February 16, 2022]
By Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A private prison company will run a new U.S.
pilot program that would place hundreds of migrants caught crossing the
U.S.-Mexico border under house arrest, the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) told Reuters, an approach that critics say is an
extension of for-profit detention.
BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the private prison company GEO Group,
will operate the so-called "home curfew" pilot program, a DHS
spokesperson and two U.S. officials said. Immigrants enrolled in the
program would be confined to their place of residence in the United
States for 12 hours a day and monitored electronically while waiting for
their court hearings.
Reuters and other outlets reported last week on the new program, which
will generally require immigrants to remain in their residences from 8
p.m. until 8 a.m.
The Biden administration has greatly expanded so-called "alternatives to
detention," such as ankle bracelets and monitoring via mobile phone. The
selection of a private prison company to run the home curfew pilot shows
how companies could retain a strong foothold in the world of immigration
enforcement.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/humanesociety_sda022411.png)
GEO Group declined to comment and instead referred questions to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which oversees immigration
detention and falls under DHS. When asked about the program, a DHS
spokesperson referred to the program as part of "impactful detention
reforms."
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed an executive order shortly
after taking office in January 2021 phasing out private prison contracts
for federal jails to "reduce profit-based incentives" to incarceration
and tackle systemic racism.
So far, however, Biden has failed to deliver on a campaign promise to do
the same for immigration detention.
There are currently 21,000 immigrants in federal detention facilities,
up from 19,000 on Sept. 30, 2020, before Biden took office. Immigration
detention centers are operating at reduced capacity due to COVID-19.
The current detention population is still much smaller than the pre-COVID
levels under former President Donald Trump, a Republican and immigration
hardliner.
The Biden administration has closed two immigration detention centers
and told ICE to narrow who it targets for arrest, with a focus on
serious criminals.
'SHAPE SHIFT'
Amid Biden's executive order on jails and the prospect of fewer
immigrants in detention, two of the country's largest private prison
companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, have been looking at detention
alternatives, including remote monitoring as a continued source of
revenue, according to transcripts of recent conference calls.
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![](../images/021622pics/news_a1.jpg)
Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. stand by the border fence while
waiting to be processed by the U.S. border patrol after crossing the
border from Mexico at Yuma, Arizona, U.S., January 22, 2022.
REUTERS/Go Nakamura/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/stclara_lda_SPONSOR_090519.png) About 164,000 immigrants are
currently in alternative-to-detention programs, according to ICE
data, roughly double the total on Sept. 30, 2020, before Biden took
office. The administration is asking Congress for funding for up to
400,000 enrollees, Reuters reported last week.
BI was awarded a $2.2 billion federal contract in 2020 to administer
such programs, according to federal contracting records. CoreCivic
disputed the contract, saying it had proposed a lower price for the
service, a subsequent U.S. government report said - a sign of
growing competition in the market of remote monitoring.
In his first year in office, Biden grappled with a record-high
number of attempted border crossings, which has become an attack
line for anti-immigration Republicans in the run-up to the Nov. 8
midterm elections.
While a COVID-19 public health order in place at the border allows
officials to rapidly expel most people who cross illegally,
thousands are still entering the country to pursue immigration
claims. Adult asylum seekers will be among the several hundred
migrants in the house arrest pilot program, which will be tested in
Houston and Baltimore, according to an ICE memo recently sent to
lawmakers and seen by Reuters.
Immigrant rights advocates contend ankle bracelets and other forms
of monitoring are expanding surveillance of immigrants without
significantly cutting back detention.
The Biden administration is repurposing the federal government's
three family detention centers to hold only adults, the ICE memo
added. But two of those facilities in Texas are managed by CoreCivic
and GEO Group, which will continue to run them.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/LPL_small%201.gif)
"It's a step in the right direction," said Jacinta Gonzalez, a
campaign organizer for Mijente, an immigrant advocacy organization.
"[But] the idea was for them to close down, not for them to shape
shift."
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New
York; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco;
Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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