Haitians in Ohio who lost protected status get ankle monitors instead of ICE detention

The decision is due to a lack of detention space, sources say, and may clash with the White House’s hard-line immigration approach.

Haitians living in Ohio who’ve lost their protected status are increasingly getting ankle monitors instead of being detained by immigration officers, attorneys say.

ICE has been alerting Haitians to appear in person at check-ins, where they are given ankle monitors to track their whereabouts until an immigration judge can decide whether they may have a legitimate reason to remain in the country, such as an asylum claim, according to the lawyers.

The decision is often made over a lack of detention space for more than 300,000 Haitians who lost Temporary Protected Status after a Supreme Court decision in June, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said.

“We were really worried that this was going to be a mass enforcement, mass detention operation,” said Katie Kersh, an immigration attorney who represents Haitian clients as part of her work at the Ohio-based law firm Advocates for Basic Legal Equality.

Instead, Kersh said, several of her clients recently received ICE letters mandating the in-person check-ins. “And so we went,” she said. People were arrested but not detained for the long term. “They all have these ankle monitors and they’re not allowed to travel outside of a 75-mile radius from their home.”