Katie Kersh said several of her Haitian clients in Ohio received ICE letters ordering in-person check-ins, then left with Ohio Haitian TPS ankle monitors instead of long-term detention. ICE is using the check-ins to place people under tracking while an immigration judge decides whether they may stay.
Katie Kersh and ICE Check-Ins
Kersh said, “We were really worried that this was going to be a mass enforcement, mass detention operation.” When the letters arrived, she said, “And so we went,” and her clients were then fitted with ankle monitors. She said, “They all have these ankle monitors and they’re not allowed to travel outside of a 75-mile radius from their home.”
The people affected are Haitians in Ohio who lost Temporary Protected Status after the Supreme Court decision in June. A senior Department of Homeland Security official said the government is using monitors because there is not enough detention space for more than 300,000 Haitians whose protections ended after that ruling. The same official said it would be impossible to hold all of them in ICE detention.
Department of Homeland Security Space Limits
Temporary Protected Status is a humanitarian program created by Congress for people from countries hit by war, natural disasters or other extreme circumstances. In June, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end protections for more than 300,000 Haitians who came after the 2010 earthquake, and for more than 50,000 Syrians who came in 2015 after civil war broke out in their country.
The current approach keeps people in the community while their cases proceed, instead of filling detention beds that the Department of Homeland Security says are already stretched. ICE is holding about 65,000 immigrants in detention facilities across the country, and ICE is also working to open new detention facilities.
Stephen Miller and Detention
The use of ankle monitors also runs against the preference of Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s immigration policy architect, who favors detention. The government is choosing release with tracking for some people anyway, because the detention system cannot absorb everyone who lost Temporary Protected Status.
The immediate next step is an immigration judge’s review of whether each person has a legitimate reason to remain in the United States. For Haitians in Ohio who have already been fitted with monitors, the practical limit is the 75-mile radius until that case review runs its course.
