The US Homeland Security Department is experimenting with a new way to track immigrant families caught crossing the border illegally and then released into the U.S.: GPS-enabled ankle bracelets.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched a programme to give GPS devices to some parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally with their children in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. In September, the Homeland Security Department confided to a group of immigrant advocates during a confidential meeting that about 70 per cent of immigrants travelling as families failed to report back to ICE as ordered after they were released at the border.

The high no-show rate and a lack of jail space for immigrant family members prompted the US administration to open a temporary family jail at the border patrol’s training academy in rural New Mexico and convert a men’s jail in Texas to one that could house families.