President Donald Trump listens as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The Trump administration is violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to release “a new policy memorandum” about a controversial immigrant monitoring system used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to immigrant rights groups.
In a 17-page complaint filed Wednesday, the Carolina Migrant Network and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights accuse ICE of violating FOIA laws by keeping a memo about the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program, and related guidance, under wraps.
“The ATD program uses various forms of monitoring to purportedly ensure that enrolled individuals comply with their release conditions, including attendance at immigration court hearings,” the lawsuit explains. “The various forms of monitoring include GPS location-monitoring devices such as ankle monitors and the SmartLink phone app; geographic restrictions on movement; curfews; and in-person and telephonic check-ins.”
To hear the plaintiffs tell it, ATD “is not an actual alternative to detention but rather a different form of ICE custody over noncitizens, including physical restraint on individuals” bodies and movements.”
The program costs upward of $250,000 per day and “is also far from short-lived,” with enrollees typically remaining subject to monitoring for an average of 744 days, while some people remain in ATD programs for almost three years, the lawsuit alleges.
“ICE’s costly, lengthy, and unnecessary surveillance of noncitizens’ every move — especially its use of ankle monitors — causes serious financial, physical, and psychological damage over these protracted periods,” the lawsuit reads. “Ankle monitors ‘can disrupt almost every aspect of daily life, from sleeping and exercising to buying groceries and getting a job.’ The ankle monitors can and do result in physical injuries ranging from discomfort to life-threatening symptoms.”
The crux of the litigation is a memo released in June 2025 and attributed to ICE Acting Assistant Director Dawnisha M. Helland, citing reporting by The Washington Post. In that memo, ICE “ordered staff to place ankle monitors on all people” in the program “whenever possible,” with the lone exception of pregnant women “who would be required to wear wrist-worn tracking devices.”
Since that initial report, various other media outlets have reported on the uptick in ankle monitor use by ICE, the lawsuit notes.
The filing goes on to quote, at length, an American Bar Association criticism of ICE’s increased use of such surveillance systems:
ATD monitoring is generally “punitive in nature because it is imposed without objective assessment of either need or risk in a one-size-fits-all approach. Indeed, the current, and increasingly widespread, misuse of monitoring may violate constitutional standards guaranteeing liberty and due process.”
The ATD program’s focus on wholesale use of ankle monitoring on “potentially over 180,000 noncitizens” stands to “financially benefit GEO Group,” a private prison corporation, the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs also allege the “blanket” use of ankle monitors is an effort toward the Trump administration’s “goal of coercing noncitizens into accepting ‘voluntary’ deportation.”
The June memo would be illustrative of what ICE actually hopes to achieve with such increased surveillance, the plaintiffs say.
“ICE has yet to make this memo publicly available,” the lawsuit goes on. “Given the tremendous impact of ICE’s dramatically increased ankle monitoring on noncitizens’ lives, health, and access to due process, Plaintiffs…seek the June 9th memorandum and related records.”
To that end, the groups submitted a FOIA request for the memo in late October 2025. That request also asked for “guidance regarding ATD, check-ins, and the directive to use GPS ankle or wrist monitors for non-detained individuals” as well as “records regarding the implementation, appendices, standard operating procedures, or field guidance transmitter with the memorandum,” according to the lawsuit.
To date, ICE has not provided the requested records.
The agency has responded three times: one time to confirm it received the FOIA request and to deny expedited processing; a second time to acknowledge the groups’ appeal of the expedited processing request; and a third time to affirm its prior denial of expedited processing.
“As of the time of this filing, ICE has not issued a determination with respect to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request for records, and therefore, Plaintiffs have exhausted their administrative remedies,” the filing goes on.
The six-count lawsuit alleges ICE has failed to make a FOIA determination, failed to make an adequate search, wrongfully withheld records, failed to publish public records, “arbitrarily or capriciously” denied expedited processing, and denied a fee waiver.
“Plaintiffs seek a declaration that Defendant ICE has improperly withheld records that will shed light on the circumstances of ICE’s ankle monitoring policies, including, but not limited to, the June 9th memo, and requiring Defendants to immediately process and release the requested records,” the lawsuit continues.
The litigation also lodges a general complaint against the beleaguered immigration enforcement agency in terms of FOIA compliance.
“ICE has an ongoing pattern and practice of improperly withholding records from requestors, including Plaintiffs, in violation of FOIA,” the filing says.
The plaintiffs are asking a judge to order ICE to “begin searching for responsive records,” order “expeditious proceedings,” waive all fees associated with the FOIA request, force ICE to “prepare an index” for any documents it continues to withhold, and enjoin the agency from continuing to withhold “any and all non-exempt records” generally and specifically enjoin ICE “from its ongoing violations of FOIA by failing to publish its current ATD guidance, policies, memoranda, and instructions.”
