Human rights groups ask UN panel to help end ICE's effort to hide detainee locations

Human rights advocates have asked a United Nations panel to intervene in a new U.S. government practice that they say amounts to the "enforced disappearance" of noncitizens. The groups petitioned the UN’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on Wednesday, urging the panel to declare the policy a violation of international law and push for its end.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removed the names of detainees with final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System on September 15. This change, which ICE did not announce and has not explained, affects more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees in ICE custody. Advocates say the move has impeded detainees' ability to challenge looming deportations by hindering their access to lawyers and has caused distress for families unable to locate loved ones.

"A system with no transparency is a system with no accountability, and that should terrify all of us," said Sarah Decker, an attorney at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, one of the petition's signatories. "Disappearing people into a network of remote detention sites, hiding their whereabouts, and cutting off their access to outside help is the definition of an enforced disappearance."

More than 45 House Democrats, led by Reps. Luz Rivas and Veronica Escobar, also urged ICE on Wednesday to restore the detainees' names to the locator system. They called the practice of concealing their locations “contrary to foundational principles of the American legal system.”

ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), denied that its practices constitute disappearing people, stating that all detainees "have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers." DHS added, "The appropriate process due to an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple." The department maintained that it has stringent law enforcement assessments in place that abide by due process under the U.S. Constitution. Detainees can typically contact relatives if they have funds in their commissary accounts, and calls to legal representatives are supposed to be free.

Approximately 1.4 million people in the U.S. are subject to final orders of removal, meaning an immigration judge has ruled they should be deported and that decision has been upheld on appeal or not appealed. These individuals often still have legal options to challenge their detention and deportation, and federal judges have previously ordered ICE to release detainees or grant them bond hearings.

The petition to the UN stated that the policy has already "obstructed legal counsel from accessing their clients in detention, preventing interventions to seek immigration relief, challenge unconstitutional detention, and block unlawful deportations." It cited instances, including a mother and daughter in Texas who lost access to their lawyers as they faced deportation. Their whereabouts were only disclosed by ICE and they were released about 18 hours later after a judge ordered the agency to reveal their location.

The petition also noted the distress of one man who reported intense stress and "darkest thoughts imaginable" after his elderly, disabled mother's whereabouts were removed from the system. The ICE online locator, launched in 2010, has become an increasingly critical tool, particularly as ICE has ramped up its enforcement and deportation efforts. The UN working group, formed in 1980 to assist families in locating missing relatives, is being asked by the petition to urge ICE to publicly list all detainees’ locations within an hour of their arrest and provide 24 hours’ notice to lawyers before a transfer.