ICE's Broken Tracking System Is Making Detained Immigrants "Disappear" on U.S. Soil

The federal government is losing track of people it's locking up.

A group of 36 Democratic lawmakers is demanding an investigation into Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online tracking system, which they say has become so unreliable under the Trump administration that it's effectively creating "disappearances" on American soil.

The letter, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and submitted Monday to the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, describes a system in collapse. ICE's Online Detainee Locator System—created in 2010 so families and attorneys could track detained immigrants—has grown "increasingly unreliable" since January 2025, according to the lawmakers.

"Without a functional locator system, DHS is effectively creating 'disappearances' on US soil," the letter states.

How the System Is Failing

Before Trump's second term, ICE added people to its locator system within eight hours of arrival at a detention facility. Now, according to the lawmakers, many detained people never appear in the system at all. In some cases, ICE deports people before their location is ever logged.

The consequences are devastating. Family members can't find their loved ones. Attorneys can't represent clients they can't locate. And people are being deported before anyone outside ICE's custody knows where they are.

The letter cites reporting showing that ICE has been holding people in secretive "holding facilities"—small concrete rooms designed for temporary detention—for days or weeks without updating the tracking system. These facilities lack the oversight of traditional detention centers, creating an inherent opacity around who's being held and where.

The Case That Shows What's at Stake

Any Lucía López Belloza's case illustrates exactly how this system failure enables deportations that might otherwise be prevented.

López Belloza, a 19-year-old college freshman in Massachusetts, was arrested by immigration agents at Boston's airport last fall while trying to fly home to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was shackled and quickly transferred to an ICE facility in Texas—but ICE never updated the locator system to reflect the transfer.

Her family and newly hired attorneys thought she was still in Massachusetts. They filed a petition in Massachusetts court to stop her deportation. Meanwhile, López Belloza was denied repeated requests to make additional phone calls, according to court records.

Before anyone heard from her again, ICE flew her out of Texas and deported her to Honduras. The Trump administration later called it a "mistake." She remains in Honduras.

Her case undercuts the administration's repeated claims that ICE is only targeting "criminals" and "the worst of the worst."

A System Overwhelmed by Design

The lawmakers point to several factors driving the locator system's collapse: the ballooning number of people in detention (currently over 70,000), the high rate of transfers between facilities, and "systemic failures" at new detention sites.

ICE's detention network is a sprawling mix of large and small facilities, jails, military bases, and federal prisons—many privately owned and operated. The agency routinely shuffles detained immigrants from one facility to another, often quickly and quietly.

Under the Trump administration, the use of non-traditional detention sites has increased, adding to the opacity. Holding facilities, which lack significant oversight, are being used for extended detention in violation of ICE's own federal policy.

"There have been similar anecdotal reports of the locator showing that a person is detained at a particular detention center yet facility contractors telling attorneys the individual is not at that facility," the lawmakers write. "In other cases, it appears that detainees are not being added to the ODLS at all."

Investigation on Hold During Shutdown

The DHS inspector general's office confirmed it received the letter but said it cannot conduct the review during the ongoing eight-week DHS shutdown. Personnel who would conduct such reviews are furloughed, the office said in a statement.

"Once the lapse ends, OIG will evaluate all requests for audits and evaluations in accordance with our risk-based process," the statement read.

In other words: The investigation into how ICE is making people disappear will have to wait until the government decides to fund itself again.

The letter's signatories include Senator Ben Ray Luján and House representatives Veronica Escobar and Lauren Underwood, among others. They're demanding answers about a system that's supposed to provide basic transparency about who the government is detaining and where—a system that, by all accounts, is no longer functioning.

When the federal government can't—or won't—tell families where their loved ones are being held, it's not just a technical failure. It's a deliberate erosion of accountability, enabled by a shutdown that conveniently prevents oversight of the very agencies carrying out mass detention and deportation.