ICE Electronic Monitoring Triples to 54,000 Immigrants; GEO Group Projects Growth to 450,000

ICE’s ISAP ankle-monitor program has tripled from roughly 17,000 to 54,000 GPS-monitored immigrants, following a June 2025 directive mandating ankle monitors “whenever possible” for all adult participants in ICE’s Alternatives to Detention program. GEO Group, the program’s sole operator, earns $2 per day per ankle monitor versus $0.96 per day for its SmartLINK facial-recognition app — more than doubling per-person revenue as enrollment scales toward GEO’s own projected target of 450,000. Mission Local reports all 20,804 immigrants under supervision in the San Francisco Bay Area are now under some form of electronic monitoring. Critics describe the program as a “digital prison” applied to people with no criminal conviction.

GEO Group’s electronic-monitoring arm (BI Incorporated) is the same diversification leg the timeline tracked in GEO’s Q1 2026 earnings call, where management signaled growth ambitions beyond physical detention beds (2026-05-06–geo-group-q1-2026-results-raises-guidance). The per-diem-rate structure — ankle monitors earning more than twice the facial-recognition app per enrollee — is a direct financial incentive toward the more invasive and more restrictive monitoring modality, independent of any public-safety justification. It sits alongside GEO’s expanding physical-detention footprint the same season, including the newly signed Rivers Correctional contract in North Carolina (2026-07-29–geo-group-signs-5yr-80m-rivers-correctional-contract-hertford-nc) — GEO now profits on both the incarcerated and the “released” ends of ICE’s custody pipeline.