{"id":25923,"date":"2025-04-14T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-14T09:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25923"},"modified":"2025-04-14T09:27:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T09:27:18","slug":"how-geo-groups-surveillance-tech-is-aiding-trumps-immigration-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25923","title":{"rendered":"How Geo Group\u2019s Surveillance Tech Is Aiding Trump\u2019s Immigration Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022, officials ordered him to use a government-issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.<\/p>\n

At least once a week, the immigrant, a former police officer in Honduras who was living in Louisiana, would take a selfie through the facial-recognition powered app to confirm his identity and location. By trading some of his privacy, he avoided being put in a detention center and obtained a work permit.<\/p>\n

In February, he received a message: report to an immigration office so the tracking technology could be updated. When he arrived, federal agents were waiting. They handcuffed him and put him on a vehicle bound for a detention center, where he has been ever since, according to an account from his wife and Jacinta Gonz\u00e1lez, the head of programs for the advocacy group MediaJustice who is working with the detained immigrant. He and his wife declined to be named for fear of harming his legal proceedings.<\/p>\n

The maker of the app he had used was Geo Group, the largest private prison operator<\/a> in the United States. Over the past decade, the company has also built a lucrative side business of digital tools \u2014 including ankle monitors, smart watches and tracking apps \u2014 to surveil immigrants on behalf of the federal government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Those products are now aiding President Trump\u2019s deportation efforts<\/a> by providing the whereabouts of unauthorized immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to legal aid groups and immigration organizations. No figures have been released about the number of arrests made from the digital monitoring program, but legal aid groups estimated it was at least in the hundreds. More than 30,000 immigrants were arrested in Mr. Trump\u2019s first 50 days in office, according to the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the people who are precisely being monitored,\u201d said Laura Rodriguez, a lawyer with American Friends Service Committee, a legal aid organization in New Jersey with several clients in the monitoring program who were detained. \u201cIt\u2019s just easy pickings.\u201d<\/p>\n

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After a Honduran immigrant arrived in the United States in 2022, officials ordered him to use a government-issued app as part of an immigration surveillance program.At least once a week, the immigrant, a former police officer in Honduras who was living in Louisiana, would take a selfie through the facial-recognition powered app to confirm his identity and location. By trading some of his privacy, he avoided being put in a detention center and obtained a work permit.In February, he received a message: report to an immigration office so the tracking technology could be updated. When he arrived, federal agents were waiting. They handcuffed him and put him on a vehicle bound for a detention center, where he has been ever since, according to an account from his wife and Jacinta Gonz\u00e1lez, the head of programs for the advocacy group MediaJustice who is working with the detained immigrant. He and his wife declined to be named for fear of harming his legal proceedings.The maker of the app he had used was Geo Group, the largest private prison operator in the United States. Over the past decade, the company has also built a lucrative side business of digital tools \u2014 including ankle monitors, smart watches and tracking apps \u2014 to surveil immigrants on behalf of the federal government.Those products are now aiding President Trump\u2019s deportation efforts by providing the whereabouts of unauthorized immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to legal aid groups and immigration organizations. No figures have been released about the number of arrests made from the digital monitoring program, but legal aid groups estimated it was at least in the hundreds. More than 30,000 immigrants were arrested in Mr. Trump\u2019s first 50 days in office, according to the Department of Homeland Security.\u201cThese are the people who are precisely being monitored,\u201d said Laura Rodriguez, a lawyer with American Friends Service Committee, a legal aid organization in New Jersey with several clients in the monitoring program who were detained. \u201cIt\u2019s just easy pickings.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25925,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25926,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25923\/revisions\/25926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}