More Than 21,000 Detainees Vanish From ICE's Public Locator System as Four Legal Groups Sue DHS
Four immigrant legal services organizations sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts on October 28, 2026, challenging ICE's practice of removing detained people with final orders of removal from the public Online Detainee Locator System and asking the court to vacate the policy.
The plaintiffs are Greater Boston Legal Services, the Rian Immigrant Center, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, represented by the National Immigration Law Center, the National Immigration Project, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Massachusetts, among others. The defendants are Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE acting director David Venturella and ICE itself. The case is No. 1:26-cv-14869.
According to the complaint, the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS) has made the locations of people in ICE custody publicly available for 16 years since it was established in 2010, allowing family members and attorneys to look them up at any time. On or about September 15, 2026, DHS changed course without public announcement and without notifying detainees or their attorneys: people with administratively final orders of removal no longer appear in ODLS search results. The complaint says the policy also includes a directive that ICE officers not disclose these detainees' locations to the public, so relatives and attorneys who call to ask are likewise refused the information.
Citing Deportation Data Project figures, the complaint states that in July 2026 ICE held an average of 66,904 people per day, of whom an average of about 21,700 had final orders of removal - roughly 32 percent of everyone in custody. On the first day the policy took effect, the complaint says, more than 20,000 people "disappeared" from the locator system, leaving families and attorneys unable to confirm whether they had been transferred, removed or harmed. The only exceptions the complaint identifies are a few facilities covered by pre-existing court orders.
The plaintiffs argue that the policy, adopted without a reasoned explanation, abandons 16 years of practice in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act; that it obstructs communication between attorneys and their clients in violation of the First Amendment; and that the failure to publish the directive violates the Freedom of Information Act. They ask the court to vacate the policy and say they will shortly move to stay it while the case proceeds.
In Congress, Representative Veronica Escobar and 46 colleagues wrote to ICE on September 30 demanding that locator information be restored and the directive's text released; the complaint says ICE did not respond by the October 14 deadline. DHS has not publicly confirmed the policy change. As reported by the Associated Press, DHS responded to the lawsuit by saying that people in detention have multiple ways to communicate with their families and attorneys, and that for a person with a final deportation order, the proper process is removal.
Related:
DHS: ICE Made More Than 491,000 Arrests and 483,200 Removals in Fiscal 2026, Both Agency Records
(Source: U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts)
Reference: The Associated Press
Source: U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）总部大楼，位于华盛顿，2025 年 4 月摄，CC BY 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Headquarters of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington, D.C., April 2025, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
