The pilot program will change immigration prisons for electronic bracelets
President Joe Biden plans to humanize the detention of illegal immigrants in the United States to avoid the terrible images of these crammed into cages. For that he will expand the electronic bracelet program that allows house arrest under digital surveillance.
More than 180,000 immigrants already carry this type of bracelets and other electronic personal tracking devices, but the Government will expand it with a pilot program that will include a curfew. This also aims to lighten the economic burden they pose, since many of the detention centers are private and for-profit. Those will be the first to see the volume of detainees drop.
Under the mandate of Donald Trump, the immigration system became so bogged down due to lack of personnel and a greater volume of bureaucracy that at this time it can take years until the legal situation of a detainee is resolved. Since Biden’s rise to power only served to further encourage immigration, the problem has only gotten worse. The Department of Homeland Security detained or expeditiously deported more than 200,000 people in December, when peak season is just beginning.
The low temperatures of these dates facilitate the passage through the desert and usually bring an increase in traffic. Authorities hope that the new visa requirement for Venezuelans implemented in Mexico last week will reduce their number, since Venezuelans are currently the second largest group trying to reach the United States, after Mexicans. Even more so than those from Honduras and Guatemala, where the Biden administration seems to have been more successful in concentrating its efforts on what it calls “the causes of migration.” During the month of January, 2,000 Russians and 300 Ukrainians have also joined, nationalities little represented until now.
The president wants to make good on one of his campaign promises, to attack the proliferation of private detention centers, but the prospect of comfortable home detention angers conservatives. Harsh conditions in detention centers, and even the fear of family separation, are believed by many to be effective measures to deter those pursuing the American dream in the United States.
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