The device was not an ordinary smart watch made by Apple or Samsung, but a special type that US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) had mandated the woman wear at all times, allowing the agency to track her. The device was beeping when she entered the hospital, indicating she needed to charge it, and she worried that if the battery died, ICE agents would think she was trying to disappear, the hospital workers recalled. She told them that, just days earlier, she had been put on a deportation flight to Mexico, but the pilot refused to let her fly because she was so close to giving birth.
The woman’s fear only grew from there, according to the hospital workers. Her delivery wasn’t progressing the way the care team hoped, and she needed a C-section, a procedure that requires doctors to use a cauterizing tool to minimize bleeding. To prevent possible burning and electrocution, patients are instructed to take off all jewelry or metals before the surgery. The mandatory watch had no way to be easily removed, nor was information about whether it would be safe to wear during the procedure readily available. Hospital staff didn’t know how to contact ICE to ask what to do. When hospital staff told the woman they might have to cut the smart watch off, she panicked, the workers said.
The same people who compared Covid ID to the nazis yellow badges.
Except, you know, in-group vs out-group.
Oh. That sounds like a lose-lose situation.