For years, Yolanda has been following instructions on an app tracking her location to keep up with her immigration case — checking in first by answering regular phone calls and later by submitting photos of herself to federal authorities. Now things are changing again.
With little explanation, Yolanda now has to wear an ankle monitor. And for the first time last week, she was asked to bring her sons along to her in-person appointment with Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), a private contractor that uses case management and technology to track immigrants for ICE.
“They were scared,” she said, referring to her two sons, who are teenagers. “Whatever they ask me, I always do it but they’ve never asked me for my kids.”
Yolanda and her two sons entered the United States about a decade ago and she started supervision under ISAP soon after. She has a pending case for asylum after fleeing her home country of Mexico due to gang violence targeting her family. Close relatives, including her father, were targeted and killed by gang violence.
Yolanda and her children spoke with Sahan Journal using pseudonyms, out of fear of reprisal. Her story is one example of how a growing number of immigrants who are closely watched by federal immigration are being forced to wear ankle monitors with GPS tracking, even if they don’t have a criminal history.
When she went in for her appointment with ISAP, Yolanda was arrested with her two children and detained for seven hours inside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal ICE building at Fort Snelling. But when ICE officials found out she had a pending asylum application, Yolanda said, they were taken back to ISAP and released. Except now she has to wear an ankle monitor.
ISAP, which has a building in Bloomington, uses technology such as an app, phone calls or GPS ankle monitors to track immigrants. ISAP also conducts in-person appointments as well as home visits. There is no clear pattern on which monitoring method is used or how long immigrants are required to be part of ISAP, according to several local immigration attorneys. Some clients are required to wear ankle monitors but aren’t told why or for how long, they added.
“All of it is very unknown,” said Brian Aust, a Minneapolis-based immigration attorney with past experience of clients wearing ankle monitors.
The ankle monitor must be worn at all times and ISAP instructs wearers how to charge the battery, Aust said. If there is damage, he added, the wearer is charged for a replacement.
Several local immigration attorneys reported an increasing number of immigrants are being required to wear ankle monitors and keep them on for longer periods of time.
Yolanda said she has been consistently following instructions given by ISAP for the past decade, so it’s unclear why they’re forcing her to wear an ankle monitor.
When she first started checking in with ISAP, Yolanda said, she did so by answering a phone call between 5 p.m. to 7 p.m once a month. The person on the line would say four numbers, which she had to memorize, then call back and repeat, she said. She always wrote down the numbers so as not to forget them, she added.
“They don’t really explain to you nothing, you just have to do this and that,” Yolanda said.
She answered their phone calls for six years, she told the Sahan Journal. Next, they wanted her to take a photo of herself at home and submit it to ISAP through an app on her phone. She took these pictures and submitted them for three years.
For years, her children watched her complete these tasks. Initially, Rodriguez, Yolanda’s oldest son, said he thought his mother had to do it for work, but he eventually found out what it was for. “I think it’s pretty crazy that she has to do all that just to be able to stay here, and maintain her asylum case to keep it open,” he said.
ISAP started to require in-person check-ins twice a month starting late last year, she said. Each time, she took time off work because she could be waiting hours for her check-in. During the check-ins, they took her finger prints and she signed a piece of paper saying that she came in person. At her January check-in, she said, her ISAP contact told her she would be switching to once-a-month check-ins since she was following all their instructions.
But in early February, she received the text to bring her two sons.
Seven-hour detention
A relative drove Yolanda and her sons to the ISAP building in Bloomington. After waiting about 10 minutes, they were escorted into a room where officers quickly arrested Yolanda in front of her two sons, Rodriguez and Danny.
Officers told Yolanda that she had failed to follow check-in instructions, but the family said they knew that claim was false. Holding back tears, Danny, the younger boy, said he watched them arrest his mother and they were all searched.
“I was emotional because throughout my whole life I’ve never seen my mom in handcuffs,” he said. “After everything that’s going on with people getting deported, I kind of knew what was happening, but I don’t know, I kind of did, I kind of didn’t.”
ICE officers took away their phones, put them into a vehicle and drove them to the Whipple building. Yolanda said she prayed to God when she was in the car to not be separated from her sons.
Rodriguez said he thought of what his life would be like back in Mexico, and how he would miss his relatives and friends in Minnesota. “I was scared, sad — just a lot of emotions,” he said.
His family fled Mexico after his close relatives were killed and the family targeted by gang violence, he said. For the past decade, he and his siblings felt safe going to school everyday in the United States, and they didn’t want to go back to living in fear.
ICE officers searched them, even looking inside their shoes, Rodriguez said. They also took his fingerprints. “I just looked next to me and I saw my mom,” he said. “There were like three, four guys around her just telling her to take off her jacket, take off her shoe laces, turn your pockets out.”
Yolanda and her two sons were kept together in a holding cell, Rodriguez said. In the room, there was a single toilet and a bench with enough space for two people to sit. Officers wrote with a marker on the outside of their holding cell, labeling it as a family of three. The holding cell had a one-way window, so officers could see inside but Yolanda’s family couldn’t see out clearly. Rodriguez said he and his brother Danny woke up around 7 a.m. to go with Yolanda to their check-in with ISAP, so they were both exhausted.
“Me and him decided to sleep on the ground, the hard floor,” he told the Sahan Journal.
The air conditioning in the room turned on and off for about every five minutes, he added, so it was freezing cold. “Just a lot of people coming in,” he said. “A lot of people crying. I saw kids crying too.”
They were given ham sandwiches with cheese, fruit gummies, granola bars with honey, an oatmeal cookie and milk. No blankets or bed mats. Three hours later, ICE officers let Yolanda, Rodriguez and Danny make phone calls. Yolanda called her attorney, Rodriguez called their relative who drove them to ISAP and Danny called Kanny, his older sister.
“I was just feeling emotional that whole day,” Kanny said. “I was just mostly crying, thinking about my life being by myself and not being with them.”
Eventually, a federal immigration supervisor spoke with Yolanda in the holding cell. After a brief conversation, the supervisor left and returned and told Yolanda that she would be deported. But Yolanda insisted that her attorney would be filing a habeas petition for her release, and she has a pending asylum application. She showed proof of her application with a piece of paper when officers allowed her to take it out of her purse, she said.
“She looked shocked,” Rodriguez said, referring to the supervisor’s reaction to the paper. “This makes me think this could be happening to other families.”
The supervisor made a phone call and came back to let them know they would be released, Yolanda said. Federal officers took the handcuffs off Yolanda, put them into a vehicle and drove them back to the ISAP building.
‘People think the worst’
When the three of them arrived, Yolanda said the woman supervising her case at ISAP was confused why they were brought back and released. While Yolanda’s two sons waited in a separate area, Yolanda said the woman took her to a room and put an ankle monitor on her.
“That girl didn’t really explain to me why, but she told me that I have to wear this and told me not to take it off,” she said, adding that they told her the ankle monitor would be tracking her location. They told her they would explain more at her next check-in, she said.
She also signed paperwork agreeing to wear the ankle monitor at all times and keep it charged, Yolanda said.
While in the shower, she wears a plastic bag over the foot with the ankle monitor since she’s not sure if it’s waterproof, she said. The ankle monitor is heavy. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she jolts awake worrying when she doesn’t feel it. There is a bulky battery that takes two hours to fully charge and sometimes falls off under her blanket, blinking red and making a loud beeping sound. “It comes off, like really easily,” she said.
Yolanda was fired from her job for missing work the day she was detained, so she is now looking for a new job.
“I’m a single mother. I have to pay the rent, pay the bills,” she said. She has a few job interviews scheduled already and is optimistic about finding a new job, she said.
The other day, Yolanda said, she walked into a store where staffers knew her. They were surprised to see her ankle monitor. They assumed she went to jail recently, before she explained her situation.
“People think the worst,” Kanny said. “It hurts me seeing her wearing that.”
