Mothers and wives – immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better future for their families – now find themselves wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and facing the possibility of having to leave the country and return to a place they no longer recognize as their own.

Mirna Pérez, a 38-year-old Salvadoran who has been living in Plainfield for 18 years, expressed her terror at the mere idea of returning to El Salvador: “I've lived outside of my country for many years, my three children were born here, they speak more English than Spanish; it's like I have to go back and be born again, but as an adult.”

Pérez was arrested together with her husband during a raid carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) at the beginning of August. Her husband was held in custody in the Elizabeth (N.J.) Detention Center. She was released, but not before an ankle bracelet had been locked around her lower leg, to allow the authorities to monitor her whereabouts 24 hours a day.

The practice of placing these ankle bracelets on people who have been detained by ICE and are waiting to come before a judge, or have orders to leave the country within a certain amount of time, is not a new one. It has been implemented since 2004, under the Electronic Monitoring Program (EMP).

Pérez says she feels “humiliated and worse than if I were a prisoner.” She adds that she has to plug the bracelet into an electrical outlet for two hours every day in order to recharge the batteries. “They told me that if they got an alarm signal because the battery was low, the police would come looking for me and they would arrest me and take me away,” she said.

For her 15-year-old daughter the situation is no different. She doesn't speak much Spanish because she finds it easier “to think in English,” and she sees El Salvador only as her parents' country, not hers. “I've got no connection to it, neither mental nor emotional,” she says.

Pérez has 90 days to leave the country. She describes her situation as extremely desperate. “My husband is in jail, my children are in tears because they don't want to go to a country they don't know, and I don't even have anything to eat because nobody wants to give me a job – as soon as I tell them I've got the bracelet they reject me,” she tells us.

An ICE spokesperson, who says there are no precise figures on how many people in New Jersey are currently wearing the bracelet, explained that this program was implemented, in part, to relieve the burden on the jails and prisons and to keep from holding so many detainees in prison.

The other program that also uses the bracelet is known as Intensive Supervision Program (ISP) [full name: Intensive Supervision for High-Risk Offenders.]

Carola Vargas' case is no different from Pérez' case; the bracelet was locked on her leg in the middle of August and, like Pérez, was given 90 days to leave the country, although she says she is ready to go. “Humiliated, harassed, scorned, treated worse than an animal, I've got a bracelet and that hurts me emotionally; it's like being in prison but without the bars. No one wants to give me work because I have to tell them I've got this thing on my ankle,” she states.

Vargas, like Pérez and five other women interviewed by this newspaper, agreed that the bracelet produces pain in their legs, so that they can't walk, and that they have to stay connected – literally – two hours a day to recharge the battery.

“Everyday we see more cases of people with these bracelets locked onto their ankles,” said Silvia Hernández, director of the Hispanic-American Center in Plainfield. “These people feel humiliated and worse than criminals.”

To Ramiro Salazar, of the organization United Immigrants in Linden, the bracelet is the least egregious of the possible options. “You can look at it as an advantage; it's better to be outside with a bracelet than inside undergoing the punishment of being in prison,” he concludes.