Beginning around September 15, 2026, ICE quietly stopped listing detainees with final removal orders in its Online Detainee Locator System, affecting more than 16,000 of nearly 69,000 people in custody. ICE facility staff were also barred from confirming to attorneys or relatives whether such detainees were being held, making it difficult to locate them or determine if they had been deported. Those affected included clients of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, eight Somali men held at Guantánamo Bay, a breastfeeding mother and her 7-year-old daughter fighting deportation to Venezuela, an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker from Ghana, and an elderly disabled asylum seeker whose son reported severe distress after she vanished from the system. Attorney Annalise Araujo described a client whose husband was detained in Florida but later found untraceable at a facility in Louisiana. More than 30 immigrant rights organizations petitioned the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances to investigate, while more than 45 House Democrats urged ICE to restore the names, and groups including the American Immigration Lawyers Association and ACLU said the change could make it nearly impossible to contest removals or file habeas corpus and torture-protection claims. DHS denied the practice amounts to disappearing people, saying detainees can still communicate with family and lawyers, while ICE declined to confirm or deny the policy.