Thousands of ICE detainees’ whereabouts have been scrubbed from an online federal database after the agency instituted an unannounced change to its deportation process.
ICE quietly removed detainees who were subject to final deportation orders from its online detainee locator system last week, three current and former ICE officials told the Associated Press.
The move has made it increasingly difficult for these detainees, who had received final orders of removal from an immigration court, to be traced or contacted by attorneys or family members.
Immigration lawyers told the outlet the change could also speed up deportations by complicating last-minute legal challenges.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association alerted its members to the change on Friday, and several lawyers confirmed to the AP that their clients had since vanished from the online system.
The new practice does not, however, apply to detainees held at temporary facilities in Minneapolis, New York City, or Chicago, or at a detention facility in Adelanto, California, AP reported. The exception comes as judges have required ICE to promptly add detainees at those facilities to its online locator as part of ongoing litigation over the agency’s detention practices.
Reached for comment, ICE referred the Daily Beast to DHS. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to the Beast’s request for comment.
ICE, which didn’t publicize the change, did not confirm or deny it in a statement to the AP.
The agency’s online detainee locator system was established in 2010 to allow the public, including relatives and lawyers, to search for people in ICE custody. Several lawyers told the AP that the decision to exclude detainees with final removal orders from the database “has no apparent parallel.”
Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the outlet that the move is especially concerning because detainees are frequently moved to different facilities before deportation.
“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” he told the AP. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”
Around 30 percent of the more than 65,000 people held in ICE detention facilities have likely received final removal orders, Michelle Mendez, the legal director at the National Immigration Project, told the outlet.
Mendez said more people have been given final removal orders for failing to attend their hearings over the last few months because the administration’s immigration courts have made it harder to participate.
“To me, it’s just another iteration of disappearing people,” she told the AP. “Why would we do that in the United States of America? It’s something we’d hear about in another country and be concerned about individual rights and due process.”
