Sponsors (7)
The bill strengthens enforcement and monitoring—potentially improving appearance rates and speeding some removals—but does so by expanding detention and pervasive electronic surveillance, increasing costs, and reducing due-process protections and community-based alternatives.
Taxpayers and local governments: the bill requires agencies to document and attempt available detention options before using Alternatives to Detention, creating a more standardized enforcement practice that may reduce perceived public-safety risks.
Immigrants on nondetained dockets, courts, and local authorities: mandatory continuous GPS tracking improves ICE's ability to monitor whereabouts and reduces flight risk and missed hearings.
Courts, immigration authorities, and taxpayers: by increasing monitoring/curfew compliance and allowing affidavit-based procedures, the bill could raise appearance rates and speed case resolution, reducing some docket backlogs and administrative burden.
Immigrants and their families: affidavit-driven in absentia removals and elimination of evidentiary hearings increase the likelihood that people cannot contest allegations, eroding due process and raising the risk of erroneous deportations.
Immigrants eligible for Alternatives to Detention: the bill shifts more cases into physical detention rather than community supervision, increasing loss of liberty and straining detention capacity and case processing.
Immigrants and households: mandatory continuous electronic surveillance and nightly curfews restrict privacy and movement and can disrupt work, schooling, childcare, and medical care for affected people.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Requires nearly all nondetained immigration cases to be placed in GPS-monitored ATD with nightly home confinement and makes affidavit-reported noncompliance an automatic basis for in absentia removal.
Official title: Remove aliens who fail to comply with a release order, to enroll all aliens on the ICE nondetailed docket in the Alternatives to Detention program with continuous GPS monitoring, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 13, 2025 by Rafael Edward Cruz · Last progress January 13, 2025
Prohibits releasing noncitizens into Alternatives to Detention (ATD) programs unless all detention beds are full, no other detention option exists, and DHS has exhausted reasonable efforts to detain. Requires every non-detained case on ICE’s docket to be enrolled in ATD with continuous GPS monitoring and nightly home confinement from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. and extends monitoring through appeals and until removal when ordered. Creates a new automatic ground for entry of in absentia removal when an ICE officer files an affidavit that a noncitizen failed to comply with release conditions, and includes a severability clause. The bill imposes operational requirements on DHS/ICE and changes procedural consequences in immigration court without providing funding or implementation timelines.