ICE’s Overnight Transfers Rip Families Apart and Sabotage Legal Defense

In the dead of night, “D,” a Guatemalan immigrant who has called Providence home for 20 years, was jolted awake by ICE guards with a chilling command: “Get dressed, you’re leaving.” No explanation, no warning, just a forced move from Rhode Island’s Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center to a distant facility in Berlin, New Hampshire.

D’s story, reported by NHPR, exposes a brutal reality for many detainees. Handcuffed so tightly they left scars, packed into a freezing van, and transported without notice, detainees like D face immense physical and psychological trauma. But the harm doesn’t stop there. These sudden out-of-state transfers sever critical ties to family and community and, crucially, undermine detainees’ legal defense.

Immigration attorneys like Pawtucket’s Elise McCaffery detail how these transfers complicate representation. Lawyers often struggle just to locate clients after moves, and visitation rules vary wildly between facilities. Court hearings get delayed or shifted to jurisdictions less familiar with their cases, stripping detainees of legal protections and disrupting carefully built defenses.

This tactic has grown sharply under the Trump administration’s expanding ICE detention network. By late 2025, ICE was using nearly double the number of facilities than at the start of the year, with a fivefold increase in transfers over 1,000 miles. A 2025 LA Times analysis found 12% of detainees had been shuffled at least four times.

To fight back, lawyers are turning to habeas corpus petitions, a centuries-old legal tool compelling the government to justify detention and halt transfers. In Rhode Island’s First District Court, habeas filings have skyrocketed from just 5 in 2024 to over 130 in early 2026.

D’s eventual release on bond came after persistent legal efforts and community support, but his ordeal underscores a systemic problem: ICE’s transfer practices weaponize isolation and uncertainty, making it nearly impossible for detainees to mount a fair defense or maintain family connections.

This is not just a story about one man’s nightmare. It is a glaring example of how ICE’s expanding detention and transfer policies inflict human suffering and erode the basic rights of immigrants. We will keep tracking these abuses and holding the system accountable. Because in a democracy, no one should be moved like a pawn in the shadows.