ICE Removes Detainees From Locator After Rights Group Says 17 Clients 'Disappeared'

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly stopped listing where it holds detainees with final removal orders, making it harder for lawyers and families to find out where they are being held through the agency's public locator.

The agency removed those detainees from its online detainee locator on 15 September 2026, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The AP first reported the change.

ICE did not publicise the move. One legal services organisation says every one of its clients with a final order has vanished from the system, 17 clients in all, and lawyers warn the change could make it harder to challenge a removal before it happens.

What Changed on 15 September

The locator dates back to 2010. ICE created it to allow relatives, lawyers and the public to search for people in custody, replacing a system in which they had to call regional offices or individual facilities.

The AP reported that detainees with final removal orders from an immigration court have now been excluded from it.

The number affected is potentially large. ICE detention facilities held more than 65,000 people as of early July, the most recent figure available, and Michelle Mendez, legal director at the National Immigration Project, estimated that around 30 per cent of them likely have final removal orders.

Several lawyers told the AP their clients had disappeared from the system in recent days, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association warned its members about the change on Friday, 18 September.

The exclusion does not apply everywhere. It does not cover detainees held at temporary facilities in Minneapolis, New York City and suburban Chicago, or at a detention centre in Adelanto, California, where judges in separate litigation have ordered ICE to add detainees to the locator promptly. The Washington Post also reported on the change and its effect on families and attorneys.

The Lawyers Who Lost Track of Their Clients

One organisation lost sight of all such clients. Atenas Burrola Estrada, a deputy programme director at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which provides legal services to detained immigrants, said every one of the group's clients with a final order had disappeared from the locator, 17 clients as of Monday, 21 September.

The missing include men held offshore. Eight Somali men detained at the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are among those no longer listed, according to My Khanh Ngo of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of their attorneys, who said the change could make it nearly impossible for some people to challenge their removal.

Her explanation was practical. 'If you can't find your client, don't know what's happening to your client, you can't get that information to the court to stop their removal,' she said.

Mendez put it more bluntly. 'To me, it's just another iteration of disappearing people,' she said, adding that it was the kind of thing Americans would hear about in another country and be concerned about for individual rights and due process.

Why a Final Order Is Not the End of the Road

A final removal order does not exhaust a detainee's legal options. People subject to one can still seek to reopen their case or file a habeas petition asking a federal judge to release them on constitutional grounds, and federal judges have granted thousands of rulings ordering detainees to be released or given bond hearings.

Some also have separate legal protections that can prevent deportation to countries where they face a risk of torture or persecution. Many now face possible removal to third countries where they have no ties, lawyers said, and a last-minute challenge in those circumstances often depends on knowing where the person is being held.

The number of people with such orders has grown, according to Mendez. She said more people have received final removal orders after missing hearings in recent months, which she attributed to steps by the administration's immigration courts that she said have made it harder to participate in proceedings and to reopen cases.

ICE did not confirm or deny the change. In a statement to the AP, the agency said detainees with final removal orders are being prioritised for deportation, while it faces what it called a historic number of injunctions from courts stopping individual removals.

The change means the public locator no longer shows where many detainees with final removal orders are being held.