ICE Removes Thousands of Detainees with Deportation Orders from Public Locator

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has discreetly removed thousands of detainees with final deportation orders from its public online tracking system. This decision, disclosed by The Associated Press (AP) on Monday, has left lawyers and families unable to determine the whereabouts of their clients and loved ones, based on testimonies from three current and former officials of the agency.

The change was implemented on September 15 without any prior announcement or public communication. The American Immigration Lawyers Association notified its members several days later, and numerous attorneys confirmed to the AP that their clients had vanished from the system that same week.

Those affected are individuals who have received final deportation orders from an immigration court. In July, this group accounted for over a third of ICE's total detainee population: nearly 16,000 of those arrested and processed that month, according to data from the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA.

This decision by ICE and its repercussions for thousands of detainees and their families are part of a constantly evolving immigration landscape. For the latest updates, check our U.S. Immigration section.

In early July, ICE detention centers held over 65,000 individuals in total. It is estimated by Michelle Méndez, legal director of the National Immigration Project, that approximately 30% of them had final deportation orders.

The removal does not apply to detainees at the Adelanto, California facility, nor at temporary locations in Minneapolis, New York, and the suburbs of Chicago, where judges have ordered ICE to keep them visible in the locator as part of ongoing litigation.

ICE neither confirmed nor denied the measure in its statement to the AP. The agency simply noted that it prioritizes the deportation of those with final orders, even amid what it described as a "historic number of judicial mandates" hindering individual removals.

Immigration lawyers warn that the disappearance from the locator could hasten deportations by preventing last-minute legal actions, such as requesting a case reopening or filing a habeas corpus petition in federal court. Judges have issued thousands of orders for releases or bond hearings in similar cases.

Atenas Burrola Estrada, deputy director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, confirmed that "every one of our clients with a final order has disappeared from the locator," including 17 people accounted for this Monday.

Among those affected are eight Somali men held at the Guantánamo military base in Cuba. Their attorney, My Khanh Ngo from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), warned that the change could make it "nearly impossible" to challenge their deportations in some cases: "If you can't find your client, you don't know what's going on with them, you can't bring that information to court to stop their deportation."

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, described the human impact of the measure: "Families are panicking because they believe the person has been deported and they don't know where they might be. From the attorneys' perspective, this has serious implications for their ability to contact their clients."

The online locator system was established in 2010 to allow families, lawyers, and the public to search for detainees without having to call regional offices or individual facilities. It has been criticized for slow updates and incomplete information since then, but the total exclusion of those with final orders is unprecedented, according to several immigration lawyers.

The Trump administration set records for arrests this summer, with approximately 50,925 detentions in August. The apprehensions of Cubans increased by 463% between late 2024 and early 2026.

"To me, this is nothing more than another way to make people disappear," concluded Méndez. "Why would we do that in the United States of America? It's something we would hear about in another country and worry about individual rights and due process."