Exclusive AP: ICE Hides Location of Thousands of Detainees with Final Deportation Orders
· Telemundo McAllen (KTLM)
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has stopped publicly disclosing the locations of thousands of detainees subject to final deportation orders, a move that has made it significantly more difficult for lawyers and family members to locate them, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice. ICE removed these detainees from its online locator system on September 15, according to three current and former agency officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the change. Several attorneys contacted by The Associated Press confirmed that their clients disappeared from the system this week, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the situation on Friday. This measure represents a drastic shift from previous practices and underscores the hardline nature of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown, making it extremely difficult to track thousands of detainees and potentially hindering their ability to exercise all legal options. The practice applies to detainees who have received final removal orders from an immigration court and could expedite deportations by complicating last-minute legal appeals, immigration attorneys noted. Nearly 16,000 people apprehended and detained by ICE in July were subject to final removal orders, more than a third of the total detained, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA. The practice does not apply to detainees held at the Adelanto, California detention center or at temporary holding centers in Minneapolis, New York City, or the suburbs of Chicago, sources indicated. Several judges have ordered ICE to include detainees in those facilities in the online locator immediately upon their arrival, as part of litigation regarding their detention practices. Attorneys and family members, distressed by the lack of information about detainees, say the effort to hide their locations adds to the ways the Trump administration has made life more difficult for detainees and their families while increasing pressure to abandon appeals and accept deportation. ICE did not publicly announce the measure and, in a statement issued to the AP, neither confirmed nor denied it. The statement indicated that deportation is prioritized for detainees with final removal orders, even as the agency faces a 'historic number of stays [court orders]' that halt individual expulsions. As a result of the change, attorneys and family members have lost track of their clients and loved ones without explanation, which is particularly concerning because detainees are often transferred to new facilities before being deported, said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. 'Families panic because they believe the person has been deported and do not know where they might be,' Chen stated. 'On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications for how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.' The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, maintains that individuals subject to final removal orders have received due process. This usually means that an immigration judge ordered their removal after a hearing, even in cases where immigrants do not appear, and that the decision was upheld on appeal or not appealed. Detainees with final removal orders still have options to challenge their detention and deportation, including the possibility of requesting the reopening of their case or filing what is known as a habeas corpus petition to ask a judge to release them on constitutional grounds. Federal judges have issued thousands of rulings ordering that detainees be released or granted bond hearings. ICE detention centers housed more than 65,000 people at the beginning of July, according to the most recent available data. About 30% of them likely have final removal orders, said Michelle Mendez, legal director of the National Immigration Project. In recent months, more final removal orders have been issued against individuals who did not appear for their hearings, as government immigration courts have taken steps to make participation and reopening those cases more difficult, she explained. 'To me, it's just another iteration of making people disappear,' Mendez noted. 'Why would we do this in the United States? It's something that, if we heard it in another country, we would be concerned about individual rights and due process.' Some individuals with final removal orders also have legal protections against deportation to their home countries, based on the likelihood that they would be tortured or persecuted. Many face deportation to third countries with which they have no ties, and their disappearance from the ICE system will make legal challenges more difficult, attorneys said. Attorneys say their clients have disappeared from ICE's locator system. ICE launched the online detainee locator system in 2010 to allow family members, attorneys, and the public to search for individuals in custody. Previously, they had to call regional ICE offices or individual facilities to try to locate them. Many advocates and lawmakers have complained that the system is updated too slowly and contains too much inaccurate or missing information, allowing ICE to hide the locations of detainees for days or weeks. Among others, minors, individuals who have been in custody of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection for less than 48 hours, and detainees who are being transferred do not appear in the system. However, the exclusion of detainees with final removal orders has no apparent parallel, several immigration attorneys said. Atenas Burrola Estrada, deputy director of programs at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, noted that 'every single one of our clients with a final order has disappeared from the locator,' including 17 in total as of Monday. Among those who have disappeared from the locator system are eight Somali men detained at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to one of their attorneys, My Khanh Ngo, from the American Civil Liberties Union. She indicated that the change could make it 'almost impossible' for individuals to challenge their deportations in some cases. 'If you can't find your client, you don't know what's happening with your client, you can't bring that information to court to stop their deportation,' she stated. 'ICE does not
AI summary · Source: Telemundo McAllen (KTLM) →
