Mich. to Test U.S. Plan to Tether Immigrants to Ease Jail Crowding

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By Detroit Free Press

Published: 07/30/2003

Using Michigan as a test site, the federal government is quietly rolling out a national plan to put electronic tethers on illegal immigrants -- easing overcrowding in jails and allowing closer monitoring of immigrants who might otherwise skip court hearings or deportation proceedings.
This month, 11 illegal immigrants in Michigan were given electronic ankle bracelets, with more immigrants scheduled to be removed from jails in Macomb, Calhoun and Chippewa counties. About 180,000 of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants have been detained since Oct. 1.
The program signals the strain the immigration service is under as it tries to carry out new antiterrorism programs that have resulted in more detentions of immigrants.
It's also a step further into a post-Sept. 11 future that has some people wincing at the idea of the government restraining noncriminals and watching them go about their daily lives. But lawyers for jailed immigrants said the new program will allow their clients to spend their last months in the United States with their families, instead of languishing in jail at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $80 a day.
In Detroit, where hundreds of mostly Arab visitors have been fingerprinted and some detained as part of a controversial national registration program, three county jails that house immigrants are in a space crunch.
Because of a backlog of cases in Detroit's immigration court, immigrants are waiting in jail for months before a hearing, their lawyers said. The government can detain an immigrant for up to 9 months before a federal judge has the power to order a release.
The federal government rents space in jails to hold detained immigrants until they are deported or have court hearings.
The tether plan was unveiled at a private meeting of immigration officials and lawyers Monday at the abandoned former international terminal of Detroit Metro Airport, according to several people who attended the meeting.
Anchorage, Alaska, was the first immigration office to begin tethering illegal immigrants, federal officials said. But the Detroit program is considered the test site because of its much larger immigrant population, they said.
'The success of the Detroit program will be closely monitored,' said Temple Black, spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The bureau 'intends to slowly and methodically expand the program to other field offices.'
The program will be offered primarily to immigrants with no violent criminal past, according to the government document spelling out the policy. Immigrants with tethers will have curfews, and may only be allowed to leave the house for work, religious services or doctor visits.
The tether sends an electronic signal through the immigrants' home phone that lets the government know when the immigrant has entered or left his house.
Until now, tethers have been reserved for criminals considered safe enough to serve their sentences outside prison -- a fact that has not escaped some immigrant advocates with mixed feelings about the program.
Some immigration-control advocates said the best way to relieve overcrowding at jails is to build more federal detention centers to house illegal immigrants. In Michigan, about 3,000 prisoners or parolees are on electronic tethers. Some had been convicted of assault crimes, a prison spokesman said.
There's not much to stop an illegal immigrant who knows he will be deported from cutting the tether and running, said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

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