Immigrant Advocacy Groups Sue ICE Over Concealing Detainee Locations

On Wednesday, four legal aid organizations for immigrants filed a federal lawsuit in the Massachusetts District Court to compel the U.S. government to disclose the whereabouts of tens of thousands of individuals detained by ICE with final deportation orders. Their locations were removed from the public online search system in September.

The lawsuit, titled Greater Boston Legal Services et al. v. Mullin, case number 1:26-cv-14869, was brought forth by Greater Boston Legal Services, Rian Immigrant Center, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, supported by the National Immigration Law Center, the National Immigration Project, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Massachusetts.

The suit challenges the so-called “ODLS Final Order Policy,” implemented around September 15 without any public announcement or notification to detainees or their attorneys. This policy led to ICE ceasing to display the locations of individuals with administratively final deportation orders on its online locator.

According to the lawsuit, as of July 2026, an average of 66,904 individuals were under immigration custody daily, with approximately 21,700—around 32%—having final orders and being excluded from the system from the first day the policy was in effect.

The plaintiffs claim that the policy also includes explicit instructions to ICE agents to refuse to disclose the location of affected individuals when requested by attorneys or family members over the phone.

Exceptions to this policy are limited to detainees in the Adelanto facility in California and temporary facilities in Minneapolis, New York, and Chicago suburbs, where prior court orders require ICE to keep them visible.

The locator, established in June 2010 and available 24/7 in 11 languages, was initially described by the agency as “a public service, particularly for family members and legal representatives, to help locate individuals arrested for administrative immigration violations.”

Advocacy groups argue that alternative mechanisms are ineffective: calls to field offices lead to long waits and disconnections, the detention information hotline only operates Monday through Friday, and its operators access the same system that no longer shows the data. Moreover, the ERO eFile program covers only about 46 of the hundreds of centers in use.

“No one should be deprived of a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their attorney to find them,” declared Jacquelynne Bowman, Executive Director of Greater Boston Legal Services. “This arbitrary administrative change leaves hundreds of thousands at risk of potentially irreversible consequences without essential legal assistance.”

The lawsuit claims three violations: the Administrative Procedure Act for abandoning 16 years of established practice without a reasoned explanation; the First Amendment for obstructing communication between lawyers and clients; and the Freedom of Information Act for failing to publish the directive in the Federal Register.

The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly confirmed the change but issued a statement, as reported by AP, in response to the lawsuit: “Illegal aliens in detention have multiple ways to communicate with their families and attorneys. The proper process for an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, nothing more.”

This case directly impacts families and attorneys attempting to locate detainees, including Cubans: the lawsuit cites the case of Noslén Sendra, a Cuban detained at Krome North in Miami, as an example of someone affected by the policy, though he is not named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

On September 30, 47 congress members sent a letter to ICE Acting Director David Venturella, demanding a reversal of the policy and the release of the directive's text by October 14; according to the lawsuit, Venturella did not respond.