Biden Admin Handing Out Smartphones Like Candy to Illegal Immigrants, Costing Taxpayers Millions
Illegal aliens are being cut loose from detention with free smartphones, courtesy of the American taxpayer.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement touts its Alternatives to Detention — Intensive Supervision Appearance Program on its website, breaking down how ICE uses technology to monitor a small percentage of illegal aliens who are released from custody while their cases are adjudicated with immigration courts and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The technology used to track immigrants includes “global positioning system (GPS) tracking devices, telephonic reporting (TR), or a smartphone application (SmartLINK),” according to ICE.
An ICE spreadsheet accounts for the property provided to illegals and the cost to the taxpayer. The agency discloses that 255,602 SmartLINK smartphone application devices have been provided to immigrants — at a daily cost to the government (and thus the taxpayer) of $245,377.
That’s a yearly cost of more than $89.5 million dollars to the taxpayer.
The phones are intended for illegal aliens to check in with ICE through geo-tagged photos.
ICE declined to provide data on the court compliance rate of those given the phones when questioned by The Epoch Times.
It’s common for illegal immigrants to refuse to show up for court proceedings.
Analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies indicates that more than a third of immigration court adjudications end with a decision “in absentia” for deportation — meaning that the alien hasn’t even shown up for court.
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The byzantine asylum system enables illegals to drag out sham claims for U.S. residency.
Immigration judges and USCIS denied 63 percent of asylum cases in fiscal year 2021, according to Syracuse University data — a significant decrease of the 71 percent denial rate in 2020 under former President Donald Trump.
Only a small percentage of illegal aliens who flout American immigration laws end up in custody while their immigration status is adjudicated.
The Department of Homeland Security was holding about 32,000 aliens in immigration detention as recently as March, according to the Washington Times.
By comparison, ICE accounted for 3.26 million aliens in the agency’s “non-detained docket” as of last year, according to an agency document.
The Biden administration has moved to cut funding for immigration detention as illegal immigration smashes all-time records.
Authorities were on track to apprehend a record 2.3 million illegals at the southern border in the 2022 fiscal year alone, according to the Texas Tribune.
ICE’s 2023 budget requested funding for 25,000 aliens, less than the 32,000 ICE was detaining earlier this year.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
