Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Colorado arrested nine migrants who had skipped out on the the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) tracking program.
The arrests include a 25-year-old Nicaraguan caught in possession of a firearm and narcotics. Others have accumulated between 50 and 100 violations of the program, which requires electronic monitoring of an individual while they are in the US pursuing an asylum claim.
The ways ICE monitors migrants are either by ankle or wrist monitor, through phone check-ins which use voice recognition or SmartLINK, where a migrant checks in via a cellphone app with facial recognition.
An ICE spokesperson told The Post the agency’s policies prevent them from releasing the identities of those who are arrested and placed in detention.
At least two of the individuals, who had been enrolled in the program since 2014 — around 10 years — were deported to Mexico.
Prominent absconders from the program include Diego Ibarra — an alleged Venezuelan el Tren De Aragua gang member and brother of the migrant charged with murdering nursing student Laken Riley — and Leonel Moreno, the Venezuelan ‘migrant influencer’ who urged others to “invade” the US and squat citizens’ homes, as The Post has previously reported.
Ibarra cut his ATD ankle monitor in Colorado in April 2023, but was only arrested in February 2024 when authorities in Georgia were searching for his brother and found him at the residence they shared carrying a fake green card.
Moreno was arrested on March 29, two years after he was caught illegally entering the US in Texas, after which he promptly skipping out on ICE check-in appointments.
The number of migrants enrolled in the ATD program has more than doubled since 2015, according to a government watchdog report by Government Accountability Online.
ICE data from April 6 showed more than 183,000 migrants are enrolled in the program under the different types of monitoring, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
Former ICE Denver field office director John Fabbricatore told The Post he believes the ATD program is “a failure.”
“In Denver, for instance, we’re seeing individuals on the program with alarming records – such as one individual caught with a firearm and narcotics, and others racking up between 25 to 100 separate violations.
“Our government is spending billions on a system that not only falls short on accountability but also fails to safeguard our communities,” he said.
The federal government is spending roughly $216,000 a day on average to pay for the technology, in addition to a more than $2 billion contract, according to ICE.
ICE’s website states the absconder rate is 1.3% for those enrolled in the monitoring program.
However, the watchdog report noted ICE had issues in calculating absconder rates and claimed many who had absconded were simply listed as ‘unenrolled’.
Between 2014 and 2020, there were more than 54,000 ATD absconders nationwide, which is a 17% absconder rate, according to the report.
“We have so many [absconders], and since the majority of them are ‘non-criminals,’ they don’t qualify for enforcement action,” an ICE official told The Post, referring to a memo the Biden administration issued in September 2021 instructing immigration authorities to limit enforcement actions.
Jon Feere, who is a former chief of staff for the agency, told The Post the ATD program gives “a false sense of security … that it’s better than allowing aliens to pour across our border without any monitoring.”
“But in reality, few border-crossers are enrolled in ATD, and even those who are enrolled routinely abscond from the program. They cut off their GPS ankle bracelets or delete the cell phone app without consequence, and this happens thousands of times a year,” Feere said.
“When an alien on ATD absconds, not much actually happens. Some incorrectly assume that ICE immediately sends a team to go locate the absconder, but generally the alien simply becomes part of the general illegal alien population,” Feere said.
