This software permits the Trump administration to trace migrants | EUROtoday

On Apr 14, 2025

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Vwhich constitutes a valuable assist for Donald Trump. The GEO Group firm is the most important personal prisons operator within the United States. But, experiences the New York Timesshe has developed a brand new, very profitable exercise for ten years: digital instruments, particularly for the surveillance of immigrants, on behalf of the United States authorities.

The American day by day newspaper experiences for instance the case of a Honduran immigrant, who arrived within the United States in 2022 and who, every week, should take a selfie with a facial recognition software to verify its location and its id. And this, to keep away from being positioned in a detention heart and with the ability to get hold of a piece allow. But in defiance of his personal life.

Read too Kilmar Abrego García, mistakenly despatched to a jail in Salvador, will he someday return to the United States? Because Geo Group’s merchandise, offered to immigration and customs companies, make it attainable to find undocumented immigrants, in line with authorized support associations and immigration protection organizations. More than 30,000 of them have been arrested in the course of the first fifty days of Donald Trump’s time period, and undoubtedly, quite a lot of them have been because of this digital surveillance program.

For associations, ” an extension of detention ”

“Easy prey”, as described by Laura Rodriguez, a lawyer at the American Friends Service Committee, a legal aid organization from New Jersey, several customers of which were placed in detention and benefit from the surveillance program. GEO Group supervises in particular a location program called alternatives to detention, set up to monitor undocumented immigrants likely to expulsion.

Rather than being released unattended or placed in detention, they receive location devices and must quickly react to alerts sent to these devices to confirm their location. “The authorities presents it as a substitute for detention”, but “we contemplate it as an extension of detention,” said Noor Zafar, principal lawyer for the American Liberties Union.

Read too The White House attacks Selena Gomez against the backdrop of anti-immigration policyGeo Group technology has repeatedly helped immigration agents to expulsionaccording to legal aid associations. In January, ICE agents in Georgia followed an immigrant to a workplace and arrested him, while another was arrested in front of a church. More recently, an immigrant from New Jersey received a call from an employee of Geo Group asking him to leave his home, the tracer not capturing a signal. Agents awaited him.

Use on a larger scale?

Good accounts making the right friends, the Trump administration has awarded new federal contracts to GEO Group and plans to renew a long -term contract with the company, the value of which was $ 350 million. While, at the same time, Geo Group’s products are deemed defective and costly, according to more than a dozen current and former employees and government officials.

The founder of the company, George Zoley, had welcomed the election of Donald Trump, seeing it as a “distinctive second within the historical past of our nation and the alternatives it can carry”. And for good reason: the immigration policy of the American president (which also suppresses thousands of temporary protection statutes) allowed during the company to climb, even if digital surveillance activities represent only 14 % of its annual turnover of 2.4 billion dollars.

Read too The case of the expelled Venezuelans, case of a showdown school between Trump and the justice
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The kangaroo of the day

Answer

In a press launch, Geo Group stated that he had “never pleaded for or against, nor played any role in the development of immigration law application policies”. The firm added that its companies have been “closely monitored, in accordance with the strict standards of government contracts”.

But authorized support associations worry that surveillance will quickly be used for bigger searches. In 2019, beneath the primary Trump administration, Mississippi brokers used the information collected because of the instruments of Geo Group to acquire a arrest warrant towards a rooster processing plant. The operation led to the arrest of 680 immigrants.

https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/cette-application-permet-a-l-administration-trump-de-traquer-les-migrants-14-04-2025-2587298_24.php