The 54-year-old was detained in October at the Southern California processing centre following a routine check-in with ICE. This came after ICE forced Herman to wear a VeriWatch — a device that monitors his location — in May of last year.

Herman told the courts the VeriWatch device "was glitchy from the start”

It connects through cellular towers, but the reception in the Ojai area is poor and it often dropped connections.

“(Herman) also received multiple troubleshooting calls from the contractor operating the VeriWatch device late at night,” said the judgment.

At an immigration check-in in October, ICE officers accused Herman of violating his VeriWatch supervision conditions. They arrested him and took him to Adelanto.

And then further down:

The device and monitoring are provided by BI Electronic Monitoring and Supervision Services, a subsidiary of the Geo Group — the company that owns the Adelanto detention centre.

“That's just a horrible way to run an imprisonment system because there's incentives, obviously, to have more people detained,” Durham said.

Herman has volunteered to wear a GPS ankle monitor or have other release conditions instead of the VeriWatch.

I damn near want to accuse them of burying the lede, but I guess it's not a huge surprise just how deeply corrupt we are as a country. holy shit lmao

[–] Rat_in_a_hat@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

That's literally how ICE functions, through private corporations.

https://freecapfinancial.substack.com/p/ice-contracts-explained-the-companies

That's why deportation numbers were crazy high and even legal residents were deported.

The whole point was to maximize their bottom line so they can get more funding from DHS/ICE

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Oh wow that's fucked.

Add to this the fact that they're refusing due process to these people, and in many cases, not allowing them to visit an attorney.

Give them a broken watch, then arrest them when it doesn't work correctly with no way of really fighting it because their lawyer doesn't even know where they are

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

Damn near? Just accuse them because in the US this shit has been normal for decades now

[–] SnowzSan@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I feel like stories like these need more light than they're currently getting. The United States is free to do what they want and far be it from me to tell them what is morally correct as a Canadian, but more Canadians need to be aware that the US is a safe destination for day visits like shopping, but that's it.