So you keep saying.
When Marco Tulio Hernandez left New Orleans to visit his cousin in Mississippi on March 13, he didn’t expect to end up in handcuffs. As an immigrant enrolled in the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP)—an alternative to detention program for people in immigration proceedings—he wasn’t allowed to leave Louisiana without permission. But he’d met with his ISAP officer a few days prior to his trip, and according to Hernandez, she gave him permission to buy the bus ticket and go to Mississippi.
Hernandez, an asylum seeker from Honduras, says that in his four years in and out of ISAP, he’s complied with all the program’s rules. These include weekly office check-ins, unannounced home visits, and geographical limits enforced by his GPS-enabled ankle monitor. He says that the frequency of the check-ins made it difficult for him to maintain a steady job, but because he was afraid of being deported, he never missed one.
But shortly after he returned from Mississippi, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him, claiming that he didn’t have authorization to leave the state. Rather than keeping Hernandez out of physical detention, ISAP led him directly into it.
The New Orleans ISAP office declined to discuss Hernandez’s case when asked for comment.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/news/2017/06/09/433975/alternatives-detention-profit-immigration-system/