The Biden administration is no longer holding undocumented migrant families in detention centers and instead has turned to remote tracking technology, Axios reported.
The administration is using such tactics as ankle bracelets and traceable cellphones to track migrants released into the country, Axios said Wednesday night.
The media outlet also said the administration had secured expensive contracts with hotels to use instead of detention centers when the intake process cannot get done quickly enough.
The move helps President Joe Biden fulfill a call he made as a candidate to release families from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.
The last migrant families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, were removed between Thursday and Friday of last week. The facility going forward will hold only single adults.
“ICE has chosen to shift its usage of the Dilley facility to focus on single adults,” an ICE spokesperson told Axios, “consistent with the administration’s goals of addressing irregular migration while supporting a system of border management that is orderly, safe, and humane.”
Smaller facilities in Karnes County Staging Center in Texas, and Berks Family Staging Center in Pennsylvania, also no longer are being used for families, officials told Axios.
One DHS official told Axios that two hotels will be used for processing, if needed.
Nearly 150,000 migrants — single adults and any family members — were being technologically tracked, according to Department of Homeland Security data provided to Axios.
The media outlet said that, over the summer, the Border Patrol released tens of thousands of families without tracking devices due to the exorbitant number of migrants.
Border Patrol statistics revealed 164,303 southern border encounters in October. That’s the lowest in eight months but more than double the number (71,929) in October 2020.
The Biden administration has been criticized for secretly flying underage migrants from Texas to other parts of the country in an effort to resettle them.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday said he planned to issue an executive order to block the issuance or renewal of state licenses to facilities housing migrant children relocated from the southern border.
A U.S. appeals court on Monday rejected a renewed attempt by the Biden administration to end former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that forced migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. asylum cases.
Biden did away with the policy soon after taking office, but a federal judge ruled it reinstated after Texas and Missouri sued.
