U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stopped listing thousands of immigration detainees with final deportation orders in its publicly accessible online locator system, a quiet policy shift that is leaving attorneys and family members unable to locate their loved ones or clients.
The change took effect September 15 and was never publicly announced, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss internal policy. Immigration attorneys across the country confirmed that clients subject to final removal orders had vanished from the federal database without explanation.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association issued an urgent alert to its members about the situation on Friday. Greg Chen, the organization’s senior director of government relations, said families are in a panic, fearing loved ones have already been deported, while attorneys are unable to maintain contact with clients or protect their legal rights.
Nearly 16,000 people booked into ICE custody in July alone carried final removal orders, representing more than a third of all ICE bookings during that month, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA. Roughly 30 percent of the more than 65,000 people held in ICE facilities as of early July are estimated to fall into this category.
Legal experts warn the policy could be used to accelerate deportations by making last-minute court filings nearly impossible. Attorneys say detainees with final removal orders still retain legal options, including motions to reopen cases and constitutional habeas petitions, but those remedies require knowing where a person is being held.
Among those who have disappeared from the system are eight Somali men detained at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their ACLU attorney said the change could make it nearly impossible to halt unlawful removals in time.
ICE launched the online locator in 2010 to give the public a way to search for people in custody, replacing a system that required calling regional offices or individual facilities. Advocates have long criticized the tool for slow updates and missing data but say the wholesale removal of an entire category of detainees is unprecedented.
ICE did not confirm or deny the change in a statement issued in response to press inquiries. The agency said detainees with final removal orders are being prioritized for deportation even as courts have issued a record number of injunctions blocking individual removals.
Michelle Mendez of the National Immigration Project called the practice a form of forced disappearance. “Why would we do that in the United States of America?” she said.