Four immigrant legal assistance organizations filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts this Wednesday to compel the government to disclose the whereabouts of tens of thousands of individuals detained by ICE with final deportation orders, whose locations were removed from the public search system in September.
The case, registered as Greater Boston Legal Services et al. v. Mullin, number 1:26-cv-14869, was filed by Greater Boston Legal Services, Rian Immigrant Center, Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, with the support of the National Immigration Law Center, the National Immigration Project, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Massachusetts.
The lawsuit challenges the so-called "Final Order Policy," adopted around September 15 without public announcement or notification to detainees or their attorneys, which caused ICE to stop displaying the location of individuals with administratively final deportation orders on its online locator.
According to the alleged data, in July 2026 there was an average of 66,904 people daily under immigration custody, of which approximately 21,700 —about 32%— had final orders and were excluded from the system from the very first day of the policy's implementation.
The policy also includes, according to the plaintiffs, explicit instructions to ICE agents to refuse to disclose the whereabouts of the affected individuals when attorneys or family members request it over the phone.
The only exceptions are the detainees at the Adelanto center in California and in temporary facilities in Minneapolis, New York, and the suburbs of Chicago, where prior court orders require ICE to keep them visible.
The locator, created in June 2010 and available in 11 languages 24 hours a day, was described by the agency upon its launch as "a service to the public, particularly to families and legal representatives, to assist in locating individuals arrested for administrative immigration violations."
Organizations are reporting that the alternative mechanisms are ineffective: calls to field offices result in long waits and disconnections, the information line on detentions is only available Monday through Friday and its operators consult the same system that no longer displays the data, and the ERO eFile program covers just about 46 centers out of the hundreds in operation.
"No one should be deprived of a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their lawyer to find them," stated 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 complaint alleges three violations: the Administrative Procedure Act, for abandoning 16 years of established practice without a reasoned explanation; the First Amendment, by blocking communication between attorneys and clients; and the Freedom of Information Act, for failing to publish the text of the directive in the Federal Register.
The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly confirmed the change, but it issued a statement picked up by AP in response to the lawsuit: "Illegal aliens in detention have several ways to communicate with their family members and attorneys. The proper process for an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, period."
The case has direct implications for families and lawyers trying to locate detainees, including Cubans: the lawsuit cites the file of Noslén Sendra, a Cuban detained at Krome North (Miami) as an example of a person affected by the policy, although he is not listed as a plaintiff in the case.
On September 30, 47 congress members sent a letter to the interim director of ICE, David Venturella, demanding to reverse the policy and provide the text of the directive before October 14; according to the complaint, Venturella did not respond.
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