GOP bill pushes for cops to help track down migrants who cut ankle monitors and vanish

Local cops would be enlisted to help track down migrant absconders who are let into the US with an ankle monitor or other tracking device but ditch them, under a new bill introduced Thursday by Republican House lawmakers and first obtained by The Post.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the federal agency responsible for overseeing the more than 6 million migrants who are currently in the US seeking asylum.

Of those migrants, 184,000 are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program — designed for those who need to be more closely monitored.

6

ICE keeps tabs on migrants through ATD, which tracks people through an ankle or wrist monitor, through phone check-ins that use voice recognition, or SmartLINK, where a migrant checks in via a cellphone app with facial recognition.

However, some migrants abscond from the program, and it currently falls to regional ICE offices to reapprehend them, a task the agency has previously admitted it does not have the manpower to do effectively.

Recent examples of absconders from the program include Leonel Moreno, the Venezuelan “migrant influencer” who encouraged other migrants to “invade” the US and squat in citizens’ homes, as The Post has previously reported.

In April 2023, Ibarra cut off his ankle monitor in Colorado and disappeared within the US.

He was only arrested in February 2024 when Georgia authorities were looking for his brother.

Authorities found him carrying a fraudulent green card, a charge for which he now faces up to 10 years.

Moreno was arrested on March 29, two years after he was caught illegally entering the US in Texas, after he failed to check in with ICE for scheduled appointments.

6

Under the new bill, dubbed “The Reshape Alternatives to Detention Act of 2024,” local police would be drafted to help ICE when necessary.

In addition to cracking down on those who flee the program, the bill seeks to limit reliance on ATD by only allowing federal authorities to release individuals with tracking technology if “all detention beds available … have been filled.”

It was introduced by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) in the House and has an accompanying bill in the upper chamber, brought by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-NC).

The bill also would require that migrants be enrolled in ATD for the entire duration of their court proceedings.

6

Jon Feere, a former chief of staff at the agency, previously told The Post how the ATD program needs more resources enforcing it to be effective, saying the program provides “a false sense of security.”

He added how easy it is to abscond, saying people simply “cut off their GPS ankle bracelets or delete the cellphone app without consequence.

“When an alien on ATD absconds, not much actually happens. Some incorrectly assume that ICE immediately sends a team to go locate the absconder, but generally the alien simply becomes part of the general illegal alien population,” Feere said.

One possible hurdle to tracking migrants who abscond from the program could be sanctuary jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with ICE.

6

In an attempt to prevent this, migrants who seek to live in those areas of the country would not qualify for ATD and would have to be detained, per the bill.

ICE sources told The Post that migrants often give incorrect addresses to immigration authorities before they’re released into the country or don’t notify authorities if they move to a different location, as is required.

Since 2015, ATD enrollment has more than doubled, according to a government watchdog report by Government Accountability Online.

Former ICE Denver field office director John Fabbricatore previously told The Post he believes the ATD program is “a failure.”

“In Denver, for instance, we’re seeing individuals on the program with alarming records — such as one individual caught with a firearm and narcotics, and others racking up between 25 to 100 separate violations.

6

6

“Our government is spending billions on a system that not only falls short on accountability but also fails to safeguard our communities,” he said.

The program is also costly to taxpayers, with the federal government spending roughly $223,000 a day on average to pay for the technology, in addition to a more than $2 billion contract, according to ICE.

While ICE’s website states the absconder rate for ATD is 1.3%, the watchdog report said ICE had problems properly calculating the actual percentage, claiming many who absconded were just listed as “unenrolled.”

More than 53,000 ATD enrollees absonded from the program between 2014 and 2020, which amounts to a 17% rate of abscondence, according to the watchdog report.

“We have so many [absconders], and since the majority of them are ‘non-criminals,’ they don’t qualify for enforcement action,” an ICE official told The Post, referring to a memo the Biden administration issued in September 2021 instructing immigration authorities to limit enforcement actions.