The change will make it harder for many families and attorneys to determine where an immigrant is being held after being taken into ICE custody.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is erasing immigrants with final deportation orders from a searchable online database, leaving families and attorneys in the dark as they try to find out where someone has been taken.

The new policy also bars immigration officers from sharing information about a detainee’s location with their attorneys or relatives by phone, according to two former Homeland Security officials briefed on the change. Immigration officials did not issue a public announcement about the new policy, which took effect Sept. 15.

“It’s deeply troubling,” said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which warned members about the policy last week. He said he feared the policy is a new tool to rush deportations and to “steamroll” immigrants’ rights.

Trump administration officials are imposing the policy at a time when they are attempting to deport 1 million people a year using highly unorthodox tactics. Officials have deported immigrants to countries where they aren’t citizens, denied people bond hearings under a reinterpretation of a 1996 law, and fast-tracked removals for people in the country for less than two years.

The federal courts have checked those powers, but attorneys say they cannot file federal lawsuits challenging a detainee’s arrest if they do not know where they are.

ICE did not confirm or deny the change to the agency’s detainee database, which was first reported by the Associated Press. In a statement, ICE said immigrants with final removal orders “are being prioritized” for deportation and that all detainees have access to phones.

But making a call from ICE detention can be challenging. There are often long lines, and detainees must pay. Attorneys say the online database is the faster way to find out where someone is being held.

Atenas Burrola Estrada, deputy program director at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, which provides legal services for detainees, said at least 17 of their clients abruptly vanished from the online locator in recent days. At first, she said, she thought it was “a glitch.” Then she said they realized their clients had been deleted from the system.

“The administration is detaining individuals … and disappearing them, making it impossible not just for their attorneys and for legal service providers to find them, but also for their family,” Burrola Estrada said. “It is truly a forced disappearance.”

My Khanh Ngo, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said eight of her clients, who are detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba and are plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the facility, are among those no longer showing up on the locator.

She called the new policy “a huge impediment to effective representation.”

“Knowing where a client is detained is like one of the basic steps of being able to represent somebody,” she said.

Lawyers must file habeas corpus petitions — federal lawsuits seeking someone’s release — in the judicial district where the detainee is being held. Many attorneys file those petitions together with a copy of a detainee’s entry in the “Online Detainee Locator System” to show that the judge has jurisdiction over the case.

ICE has the power to transfer detainees to facilities thousands of miles from their homes, their families and their attorneys. Many are transferred multiple times. That makes the locator a key tool in keeping track of where someone is.

Before the database was created, detainees often vanished into the system. Some were deported before anyone could find them.

Attorneys say the locator helps them pinpoint where clients are, establish communication and set up appointments to gather evidence for their cases.

Relatives also use the detainee locator to check on loved ones, deposit money in their commissary accounts so they can purchase food and personal hygiene items and drop off prescription medication.

“Especially when you factor in the speed at which they’re moving people around, even just within the United States, it’s a very serious problem to not be able to locate these people,” said Dree Collopy, an immigration lawyer and a managing director at Human Rights First, an advocacy organization.

The Obama administration created ICE’s detainee locator in 2010 as part of a slate of sweeping reforms following investigations into dire conditions in detention facilities, including medical neglect and dozens of undisclosed deaths.

The locator allows people to search for detainees using demographic data such as their native country and their names or immigration case numbers. Officials said then that the goal was for people to quickly find detainees within minutes.

Before the locator launched, the only way to find a detainee’s location if they were unable to place a call was to contact individual ICE field offices, Collopy said, a labor-intensive job.

“Taking away the locator doesn’t eliminate the government’s ability to find people,” Collopy said. “It just makes it harder for everybody else.”

The number of people being held in immigration detention has skyrocketed since Trump returned to the White House. On an average day, more than 60,000 people are in ICE custody, a figure that is double compared to what it was during the Biden administration. Thousands of those individuals have final removal orders. Deaths in immigration detention have spiked to the highest levels in two decades, with 33 people dying last year.

Immigrants with final removal orders might have multiple grounds to stay in the United States, attorneys said.

Some might have been ordered deported because they missed a hearing and are trying to reopen their case. Others might be appealing a judge’s decision to the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals or to the U.S. district courts.

Still others might qualify for humanitarian protection because they could face persecution if sent to their home country.

“There are lots of people who have final orders of removal who should not be removed,” said Nancy Morawetz, a professor at New York University School of Law.

But, she said, if immigrants are arrested and deported before an attorney can find them and file a lawsuit, then it could be difficult to bring them back.

”It’s basically trying to do things in secret so that it can’t be challenged," she said. “This makes it impossible for people to do anything.”