ICE Is Making People Vanish. Congress Must Act.

Right now, more than 70,000 people are held in ICE detention, quietly transferred between jails, private facilities, and military bases with no warning. For families and attorneys trying to find them, there is one tool: the ICE Online Detainee Locator System. It is no longer working.

Since January 2025, detained individuals are routinely failing to appear in the system — or are deported before their location is ever recorded. Thirty-six members of Congress are calling it what it is: the federal government is creating "disappearances" on U.S. soil.

Any Lopez Belloza was 19 when she was arrested at a Boston airport and secretly transferred to Texas without her family or attorneys being notified. Her lawyers filed an emergency petition in Massachusetts while ICE deported her to Honduras. She remains there today.

The DHS Inspector General — the watchdog meant to investigate abuses like these — has been shut down for eight weeks. Congress must pass immediate ICE and DHS reforms to end the shutdown, mandate an investigation into the locator system, and ensure that no person can be deported before their location is updated and their attorneys are notified.

A person in government custody has a right to be found. Demand Congress defend that right, for all of us.