ICE's Online Detainee Locator is the public database families and lawyers use to find out where someone in immigration custody is being held. The Associated Press reported on September 21, 2026 that “ICE removed those detainees from its online detainee locator system on Sept. 15,” meaning people with final orders of removal, citing three current and former ICE officials who spoke anonymously. The American Immigration Lawyers Association had independently warned its members three days earlier that the system “is no longer providing information on individuals with final removal orders.”
The agency has not explained the change. AP reported that “ICE did not publicize the move and in a statement issued to the AP, the agency did not confirm or deny it.” ICE's statement said people with final orders were being prioritized for deportation even as it faces a “historic number of injunctions” from courts halting individual removals. DHS's position, per AP, is that people with final orders “have received due process.”
Lawyers describe the effect in practical terms. “Every single one of our clients who has a final order has disappeared from the locator,” said Atenas Burrola Estrada of the Amica Center, which counts 17 such clients. The ACLU said eight Somali men held at Guantanamo Bay dropped off. “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,” said the ACLU's My Khanh Ngo. Greg Chen of AILA: “Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don't know where the person might be.” A final order does not end every legal avenue; people still file last-minute challenges, and a court needs to know where someone is to act on one.
How many people are affected is an estimate, not a count. AP found in ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project that “nearly 16,000” people booked into detention in July had final orders, more than a third of that month's bookings, and a National Immigration Project lawyer estimated about 30% of the more than 65,000 people in detention have them. AP's sources said the change does not apply at facilities in Adelanto, California, and at holding sites in Minneapolis, New York City and suburban Chicago, where judges have ordered ICE to list detainees promptly.
No statute requires the locator, which ICE started in 2010. But the administration's own July 2025 privacy assessment says the system contains information about individuals “currently in” ICE or Customs and Border Protection custody, and lists only narrow exceptions, for abuse and trafficking victims, minors, and people held by Customs and Border Protection for under 48 hours. In a March 2026 court filing in Minnesota, ICE told a federal judge that “families and counsel are automatically notified via the Online Detainee Locator Syster (ODLS) within two hours of arrival at a new facility” (the typo is in the filing). The locator was already under scrutiny: in April, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ben Ray Luján asked the DHS inspector general to investigate gaps in the locator. The core fact rests on AP's reporting and AILA's alert; no other outlet had independently reported it when this was written (see also DHS Shuts Down Its Immigration Detention Watchdog as Use of Force Against Detainees Surges 37% and 30+ Detainees Died in Custody in 2025).