Washington, DC, June 29, 2026 -The Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, and Zuckerman Spaeder LLP filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE’s) expanding use of ankle and wrist-worn GPS monitors, which are inflicting serious harm on tens of thousands of immigrants across the country.

Filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the lawsuit targets a new ICE rule that imposes continuous, real-time GPS monitoring without individualized justifications—forcing nearly 50,000 people into a system of arbitrary electronic surveillance. Since ICE adopted this rule in secret in June 2025, individuals have been subjected to intrusive and constant surveillance without meaningful review, explanation, or opportunity to challenge these conditions. This includes pregnant women, who the rule requires to wear GPS monitors on their wrists.

The complaint details the physical, psychological, and economic harm caused by ICE’s widespread GPS monitoring. Plaintiffs – most of whom are working mothers – report pain, swelling, bleeding, and sleep disruption caused by ankle monitors, along with anxiety, depression, social isolation, and job loss tied to constant surveillance and stigma. Many have missed work due to mandatory check-in appointments and device malfunctions, or have been unable to access medical care or meet caregiving responsibilities because of these strict monitoring requirements.

Despite these harms, ICE has imposed the policy uniformly and mandatorily—even for people the agency has already determined are neither a flight risk nor a danger to their community, including for pregnant, postpartum, and nursing mothers like the plaintiffs—relying solely on the new internal directive to justify escalating supervision.

The lawsuit argues that the new rule transforms a program meant to support release from detention into one that extends ICE’s physical control of people’s bodies into their homes, workplaces, and daily lives—without achieving one of the program’s stated central goals of increasing court appearance rates. It also highlights the growing financial costs of the program, which has increased government spending by millions of dollars at taxpayers’ expense while benefiting the private prison contractors that administer the monitoring system.

Plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down the policy, end ICE’s use of blanket GPS monitoring, and restore individualized, case-by-case determinations of release conditions.

“ICE has offered no justification for their ‘ankle monitors for all’ policy, but it serves their interest in making daily life harder for immigrants, while also increasing profits for their friends in the private prison industry,” said Evan Benz, Managing Attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “The Alternatives to Detention program was supposed to be a reform that would reduce the number of people held in detention. Instead, ICE has transformed it into a harmful surveillance system and an alternative form of detention—one that even extends to pregnant and nursing mothers like the plaintiffs in this case. These women are bravely speaking out not just for themselves, but for nearly 50,000 other immigrants subjected to this policy.”

“This nationwide policy of unjustifiable GPS surveillance is an affront to the human right to be free from arbitrary intrusions on liberty,” said Anthony Enriquez, VP of U.S. Advocacy and Litigation at the Kennedy Human Rights Center. “People on ankle monitors commonly report serious physical harms, including electric shocks, circulation issues, and bleeding. And for what? Studies have long shown that 24/7 surveillance has no effect on court appearance rates. The true beneficiary? The private prison companies raking in millions of taxpayer dollars with GPS monitoring contracts.”

“We’re proud to partner with Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center in representing these courageous plaintiffs as we seek to end ICE’s unwarranted blanket rule that effectively shackles tens of thousands of non-citizens with ankle or wrist GPS monitors without any individualized basis for doing so,” said Ivano Ventresca, Partner at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP.