San Francisco's ICE region now monitors more immigrants through ankle bracelets, smartphone apps and wrist devices than any other in the United States — 20,804 people as of July 11, more than Miami, Los Angeles or Chicago — according to federal data compiled by Syracuse University's TRAC.

The surveillance runs through ICE's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), operated under a federal contract by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of the for-profit prison company GEO Group. Immigration attorneys say the Trump administration has expanded both the duration and intensity of monitoring — often on people with no criminal record and active, compliant asylum cases — while academic research finds the devices do little that a lawyer wouldn't do better. The result is a fast-growing, locally concentrated surveillance system that makes it hard for the people wearing it to hold a job.

Every immigrant who reports to ICE offices across the agency's San Francisco "area of responsibility" — a territory that spans all of Northern California, Hawaii, Guam and Saipan — is now under some form of electronic surveillance. According to a July data release analyzed by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), the San Francisco area office leads the nation with 20,804 people enrolled in ICE's "Alternatives to Detention" programs, ahead of Miami (19,380), Los Angeles (18,999) and Chicago (16,967).

Most are tracked by SmartLINK, a smartphone app that logs their location: 16,765 people, by Mission Local's count of the same ICE release. Another 3,624 wear ankle monitors, and 415 wear bulky wrist devices. Nationally, ICE's monitoring programs now track 183,181 people — and by TRAC's tally, 70.6 percent of those in ICE detention have no criminal conviction, many of the rest cited only for minor offenses like traffic violations.

ISAP is not new — ICE piloted it in 2004 — but attorneys say its reach has sharpened under President Trump. "What we're seeing under this administration is, they're increasing the restrictions and increasing the supervision so that it's more difficult for people to comply, and so these companies can make more money," Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program at the Bar Association of San Francisco's Justice and Diversity Center, told Mission Local. The program is administered by BI Incorporated, a subsidiary of GEO Group, the publicly traded company that also runs for-profit detention centers.

How ICE decides who gets an ankle monitor versus an app is opaque. A Congressional Research Report describes risk-assessment software weighing criminal history, alleged gang ties and community connections. But attorneys describe the outcomes as erratic. Atkinson said the assignments turn on "money and whatever directive they have coming down — it is not consistent." A second attorney, Kelly Wells of the San Francisco public defender's office, called the decisions "arbitrary."

The devices exact a daily cost. Wells's client María, a 21-year-old asylum seeker from Guatemala with no criminal record, has worn an ankle monitor for nearly the entire two years she has lived in Daly City, according to her attorney — even as she and her partner have met every deadline in their asylum cases. She told Mission Local that prospective housecleaning clients see the monitor, assume she is a criminal, and pass her over; the device also caps how far she can travel for work. It wakes her every other night vibrating for a charge, on top of the feedings for her toddler. "I did nothing bad to have this," she said in Spanish.

Whether the surveillance even accomplishes its stated goal — ensuring immigrants appear in court — is contested. A June 2025 University of Washington study found monitoring produced only a modest bump in appearance rates: 95 percent of monitored immigrants attended their final hearings, versus 83 percent overall. The bigger predictor, the researchers found, was simply having a lawyer.

That gap frames the local stakes. San Francisco, a self-declared sanctuary city, now sits at the top of a national ranking it did not seek — the epicenter of a private-contractor surveillance apparatus expanding faster than the courts, or the public, have reckoned with.