The Briefing:
- Approximately 183,000 people are currently tracked under ICE's electronic monitoring program — nearly three times the population held in physical detention
- GPS ankle monitors have tripled since the start of the current administration, reaching approximately 54,000 by August 2026, the highest count in the agency's recorded history
- San Francisco leads ATD enrollment with more than 20,000 monitored individuals, followed by Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago — each exceeding 18,000
- Legal advocates and court filings document cases where check-in data and device geolocation have been used to arrest people at their homes — not at a border crossing or during a public raid
A surveillance apparatus assembled largely in secret over the past year now tracks more than 183,000 immigrants across the country — not inside detention centers, but inside their own homes, workplaces, and neighborhoods. And in the three largest U.S. metro areas, the stakes have never been higher.
The expansion of ICE's post-arrest digital monitoring program — formally called the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program — is fundamentally altering what compliance looks like for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in active proceedings. Advocates warn the program has ceased to function as a genuine alternative to incarceration and has become an extension of it.
From App to Arrest: The Mechanics of Digital Monitoring
At the center of ICE's post-release surveillance is SmartLINK, a smartphone application operated by BI Incorporated — a private contractor founded in 1978 as a cattle-monitoring company, later acquired by the private prison conglomerate GEO Group — that deploys facial recognition software and GPS location tracking to conduct remote check-ins. The app costs ICE roughly $4 per participant per day, compared to approximately $150 per day for physical detention.
But the program's reach extends well beyond scheduled smartphone prompts. In September 2025, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a new $11 million no-bid contract to Cellebrite — a digital forensics firm whose software can unlock phones and extract a complete copy of all stored data, including location history, encrypted messages, and call records. In May 2026, federal documents revealed that ICE and Homeland Security Investigations plan to spend up to $100 million over five years on Cellebrite tools, signaling a major long-term expansion of forensic phone surveillance tied to immigration enforcement.
In the field, ICE agents have deployed Mobile Fortify, a government-issued smartphone application that allows agents to conduct real-time facial recognition and fingerprint scans, instantly querying multiple federal and state databases simultaneously — including DHS's biometric identification system storing more than 270 million records, the FBI's National Crime Information Center, CBP's Traveler Verification Service, the State Department's visa and passport photos, and state driver license records. According to a lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago in January 2026, ICE has deployed Mobile Fortify in the field more than 100,000 times since the app launched in June 2025 — a sharp departure from its prior use, which had been confined to ports of entry and child exploitation investigations.
The Memo That Changed Everything
The sharpest acceleration in monitoring intensity traces back to a single internal directive. An ICE email issued June 9, 2025, to all Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel directed staff to equip noncitizens with GPS ankle monitors "whenever possible and increase reporting requirements," and prohibited the release of noncitizens without electronic monitoring — dismantling the individualized, risk-based assessment process that had governed the program for decades. The directive was signed by Acting Assistant Director Dawnisha M. Helland.
The consequences were swift and measurable. The number of people wearing GPS ankle monitors tripled in the months that followed the memo, rising from roughly 17,000 at the start of the current administration to approximately 54,000 by August 2026 — a figure confirmed by ICE data reported by Noticias Telemundo on August 27, 2026, and corroborated by GEO Group CEO George Zoley during an August 2026 earnings call. An earlier milestone, documented in a February 2026 ICE fiscal report, placed the count at approximately 42,000 — already a historic high for the agency at that point. Previously, ankle monitors had been reserved for high-risk cases or individuals with a documented history of noncompliance. Under the new directive, they became the default.
Critics argue the shift was never primarily about public safety. Legal advocates and researchers have raised documented concerns that ATD has mutated from a release mechanism into an extended enforcement apparatus — with growing evidence that ICE is using check-in requirements as opportunities to locate and detain individuals at their homes.
When Check-Ins Become Traps
For immigrant families in major metro areas, the program's dual function — official supervision layered over active surveillance — has produced a documented pattern in which in-person or app-based check-ins serve as arrest events.
In Minnesota, a Mexican immigrant mother who had spent years following tracking app instructions to maintain her asylum proceedings was arrested by ICE during an in-person check-in, then released with an ankle monitor attached. In another case reported by the Sahan Journal, a Liberian immigrant who had worn an ankle monitor for approximately two years — and whose most recent supervisor check-in had occurred just weeks prior — was arrested after agents arrived at his home and forced the front door open.
"We've seen a number of cases where ICE has used the ankle monitor to track someone down at home," one Northwestern legal expert told Medill on the Hill, describing a tactic in which agents sometimes fabricate a pretext — telling someone there's been a device alert and asking them to step outside — to compel individuals beyond the threshold of their front door.
The Numbers Behind the Expansion
The geographic distribution of monitoring closely tracks the country's largest immigrant communities. The San Francisco field office leads ATD enrollment, with more than 20,000 monitored individuals. Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago each exceed 18,000, while the New York field office registers approximately 10,700 participants. Together, these five metropolitan areas account for a substantial portion of the national total.
Nationally, ICE made 50,925 arrests in August 2026 alone — the third consecutive monthly record — consistently outpacing deportation capacity and expanding the population of individuals absorbed into the monitoring system post-arrest.
The scale of enforcement against people with no criminal history has drawn sustained scrutiny. Analysis of ICE data by Syracuse researcher Austin Kocher found that 92% of FY 2026 ICE detention growth between September 2025 and January 2026 came from individuals with no criminal charges or convictions — meaning only 8% of the new detained population had any prior criminal record. The American Immigration Council's separate analysis found that more than two out of every three at-large arrests during the same period targeted individuals with no criminal record at all — a profile that directly challenges the public safety framing the administration has used to justify the program's expansion.
What Families in NY, Chicago, and LA Need to Know Right Now
For mixed-status families navigating this environment, legal advocates are issuing urgent guidance across all three metro areas.
Ankle monitor violations can trigger automatic arrest warrants. Common violations in 2026 include missed SmartLINK facial recognition check-ins, repeatedly allowing the device battery to die, showing a GPS location inconsistent with the address of record, or leaving an assigned geographic district without prior approval. ATD enrollment does not replace immigration court — every Master Calendar Hearing date must still be attended.
Do not tamper with or remove any monitoring device. The ankle monitor contains a tamper-detection sensor; any interference is logged immediately as a violation and can generate an arrest warrant.
An immigration attorney should be reachable before any in-person ICE check-in. Documented cases across Illinois, Minnesota, and California confirm that compliance appointments are being used as enforcement events. Families should share a lawyer's contact information with trusted household members and establish a clear safety plan before any scheduled appointment.
Know your rights when ICE comes to your door. Agents who do not carry a judicial warrant signed by a federal judge — which is distinct from an administrative ICE warrant — have no legal authority to enter a private residence. Advocates recommend keeping a printed copy of relevant court documents near the front door at all times.
Organizations such as ICDI Chicago (formerly Interfaith Community for Detained Immigrants) provide direct legal referrals, accompaniment services, and multilingual support to immigrants in the Chicago metropolitan area navigating ATD requirements. In New York and Los Angeles, immigrant rights coalitions have distributed multilingual guides on moving through ATD check-in requirements without inadvertently triggering enforcement action.
The surveillance infrastructure ICE has assembled is, by every available measure, the most expansive in the agency's history. For the communities living inside it, the question is no longer whether to engage with the program — for most, that decision was made at the moment of arrest. The question now is how to move through it without disappearing into it.
