Bailey Porter
Editor-in-Chief

Looking for more ways to infringe on human rights and dignity, the Department of Homeland Security is at it again with a pilot program implemented to track non-criminal immigrants using electronically monitored anklets.

Just like some rapists or criminals on parole must wear, immigrants in eight trial cities who are going through the legal application process to stay in the country are forced to wear the tracking devices 24 hours a day. They must remain in their homes from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day and check in three times a week with a security company that works for Homeland Security.

This is nothing short of a prison sentence for people not accused of any crime.

National Public Radio reported the story of one man who legally emigrated from Belize five years ago and began working as a dish washer at a restaurant. Although his application to stay in the country was rejected, he hired a lawyer to appeal his case, and as if on cue the government had their newest test case for their program. Now assistant manager at the restaurant, the man is being weighed down by a 5 inch square surveillance anklet and must constantly take time off from work to report in with the security company that keeps track of him as a rancher does his cattle.

Homeland Security claims the bracelets will solve the problem of immigrants going into hiding after being turned away by the government and told to leave the country. It also sees the program as within its right to detain any alien applying for permanent residence in the United States especially if they are risks to public safety.

Honestly, I’m not all that worried about a hard-working dish washer or any of the other 1,700 immigrants who have been shackled since last summer.

My nightmares have something to do with flashing bracelets and shady government agents taking my neighbor’s liberty away right under my nose.

The dehumanizing nature of these electronic bracelets matches the senselessness with which this program was constructed. Treating people with a good work ethic and honest intentions like criminals will only encourage illegal immigration or increase the amount of immigrants who go into hiding.

What choice are immigrants being forced to make? Tracking devices and house arrest or risk their chances as illegal aliens? The illegal alien scenario could win out: a single family of six entirely dependent on under-the-table payment for odd jobs the children do between school and learning how to make it in the reality of the American dream.

This can’t be the lesson this immigrant-framed country wants to teach its new residents.

Homeland Security will implement these bracelets nationwide if everything goes well in the next six months and the department projects that the bracelets will be cheaper than imprisoning immigrants legally trying to stay here. They are probably right. After all, the internment camps at the Fairplex were probably cheaper too. But the country finally admitted that that wasn’t our finest hour either.

Soon there will be tracking accessories for all of us to wear. It’s already started with some high school students who are forced to wear electronic identification cards around their necks at school.

Bailey Porter, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at porterb@ulv.edu.