During the first weekend in August, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Springfield, Ohio began calling in Haitian immigrants who have lost their Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to the Cincinnati offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for mandatory “in-person check-ins,” during which many were fitted with electronic ankle bracelets and told to come back in 30 days, even if they already had a different court date, according to the Springfield News Sun. The GPS ankle monitor restricts the user to a 75-mile radius around his or her residence. Anyone refusing it is given the alternative of being deported to Haiti with $2,600 in hand as an “exit bonus.”
Forcing immigrants to wear ankle monitors “reminds me of slavery,” said one Ohio-based anti-ICE protester. “This is shackling. This is modern-day shackling,” Yahoo reported him saying. The Cincinnati Enquirer quoted Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield who said the ankle monitors were reminiscent of “chains and slavery. They don’t want us to be here and now they try to put us in chains as if we did something wrong.”
