Privacy advocates say the SmartLINK app, an alternative to ankle monitors, helped ICE increase the number of people it tracks from <6K to 230K+ in three years
and its privacy risks—with @documentedny: https://themarkup.org/... Kate Morrissey / @bgirledukate : I've seen asylum seekers be given phones from ICE that are only for this check in app, but this article sounds like some folks are having the app installed on their personal phones? Anyone have clarification on that? https://documentedny.com/... @documentedny : “They took off my ankle monitor and they're making me use that app. It's as if I still had it [the ankle monitor] on.” With @themarkup, we spoke to immigrants about the stress caused by an app ICE uses to monitor their movements in the U.S. https://documentedny.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
SmartLINK is the latest step in a shift ICE began years ago: after technical glitches with the Guardian tracking app cost parolees jobs and sent some back to detention, the agency kept looking for software substitutes for GPS ankle bracelets. A 2021 examination of Shadowtrack and SmartLink showed states and ICE already treating phone apps as parole infrastructure before the pandemic-era scale-up.
First-order effects
- Immigrants on ICE's alternative-to-detention program now carry the monitor on their own bodies — some report having SmartLINK installed on personal phones — trading a visible shackle for constant check-ins they describe as no different from wearing the bracelet.
- The population under active electronic tracking jumps from under 6,000 to more than 230,000 people in three years, because an app removes the hardware and staffing costs that capped ankle-monitor caseloads.
Second-order effects
- Vendors follow the money: as the reporting on Geo Group's digital-tools sideline shows, private prison companies are building smart watches and tracking apps into a lucrative business line alongside detention beds.
- Independent scrutiny scales with the caseload — the EFF's analysis of 16 ankle-monitor-replacement apps found wide data access, third-party trackers, and unreliability, giving advocates concrete evidence to press regulators and lawmakers with.
Third-order effects
- If app-based tracking keeps displacing both ankle monitors and physical detention, immigration enforcement restructures around continuous smartphone surveillance as the default, with the privacy rules governing those apps — not detention capacity — becoming the binding constraint.
The trend: Immigration surveillance is migrating from worn hardware to smartphone apps, letting agencies track orders of magnitude more people while shifting the debate toward data-privacy regulation.