One day in April 2022, a Venezuelan immigrant it was on the banks of the mighty Rio Grande. He could see his future directly in front of him as he cautiously walked through the currents. With each step, his 6-foot-4-inch frame began to disappear beneath the murky green water.
“The water was up to my neck,” he said. “I held my backpack over my head and my feet could barely touch the ground … I was afraid I was going to get swept away. When I saw the Border Patrol on the other side, I knew I had to get there “.
He heard horror stories of this dangerous leg of the journey. Last year, more than 700 migrants drowned while trying to cross the river, which winds nearly 1,900 miles along the southern US border. The Border Patrol apprehended him in Del Rio, Texas. He was soaked and exhausted, but said he could finally exhale for the first time in three months.
Once he was processed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agent handed him a smartphone. He would become her lifeline while she waited for the immigration court date on her asylum application. The phone came with an app called SmartLINK, which tracked your location using GPS data and confirmed your identity using facial recognition software. An ICE agent asked him to sign up by taking a photo as confirmation each week.
“I had to take my phone everywhere,” she said. “When I took the pictures it had to be exactly where they wanted it to be… They told me that if I lost it, I'd get rid of it, or if it wasn't paid, they'd come after me and I'd be in trouble really big… With the phone, I felt like a fugitive you see on the news.
SmartLINK transition before going to immigration court
In 2018, ICE launched SmartLINK as part of its Alternatives to Detention program to monitor migrants it deemed “low risk” to the American public. The enforcement, which costs $4 per migrant per day, is considered a cost-effective alternative to detention, which costs roughly $150 per migrant per day, according to the agency. The actual cost difference is difficult to estimate, as migrants are often monitored for longer than they are detained.
“It's really an expansion of migrant tracking and migrant surveillance,” said Austin Kocher, a research professor at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University. “Electronic monitoring really started in the criminal justice system. Then it was adopted and adopted by ICE as part of their program.”
As of April 2024, ICE has supervised 779,679 migrants through the application, according to data from the agency. Officials note that because of the cost, migrants who comply with ICE records often transition out of enforcement after an average of 14 to 18 months. In the meantime, immigration court proceedings it can last for years.
In its own report to Congress, ICE acknowledged that it will continue to have challenges reporting on enforcement effectiveness because of this time gap, when migrants are removed from enforcement but their cases are not are resolved
Kocher, who has studied whether SmartLINK is effective, said the answer depends on the intended purpose of the application. If it's to make sure migrants go to their court hearings, he said, most already want to.
“There's a huge incentive for them to follow all the rules and a huge disincentive for them to ignore the rules,” Kocher said. “Expanding access to legal representation and other types of legal support could serve the same purpose.”
According to TRAC, 99% of migrants who have lawyers meet their requirements. migrants who do not register or respond to ICE agents through SmartLINK are considered fugitives. These cases are then transferred to fugitive units for further law enforcement action.
Evasion rates and effectiveness
ICE Deputy Director for Enforcement Removal Operations Tom Giles points to the removal rate of migrants on SmartLINK as evidence of the enforcement's effectiveness.
“Our leak rate is less than 10 percent for this fiscal year,” Giles said. “Our non-arrest population has grown over 200%, but really, we don't have the resources to effectively manage this backlog the way we would like to. For the cases that are ongoing. [SmartLINK]It's been effective for us.”
CBS News asked ICE to provide the escape rate before SmartLINK to add perspective to the numbers. Spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment when this article was published.
“I just got my backpack full of dreams”
Two years after his journey from Venezuela, the 34-year-old migrant who spoke to CBS News now lives near the seat of American power: the U.S. Capitol. While Congress debates the future of thousands of migrantshas a message for representatives who could probably make up their own mind.
“The solution is not to oppose immigration,” he said. “The solution is to create better laws to solve this problem before it gets worse.”
His asylum case was dismissed. The next steps towards your “American Dream” will be to know if your request Temporary Protection Status is approved As opposed to being granted asylum, if granted TPS, would have to re-register to maintain that status. However, TPS does not carry any legal permanent resident status. Meanwhile, he dreams of starting a restaurant business, learning English, and eventually calling Washington, DC his permanent home.
“There are a lot of immigrants who have hopes and dreams of coming to this country because they like this country,” he said. “They want to start a new life and for their children to grow up here. They want their children to have a beautiful future here.”
Tom Hanson
