ICE Detains People in Secret. The Marshall Project Is Suing to Make It Public.

Since President Donald Trump’s return to office, federal immigration agents have secretly detained people — cutting them off from lawyers and family — for hours, days and, in some cases, weeks, according to numerous media reports.

A man vanished for five days last December while Immigration and Customs Enforcement shuttled him through detention camps around the country, as [The Marshall Project previously reported](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/06/01/ice-transparency-immigrants-disappear-transfers). By the time his family learned where he was, he’d been deported to Somalia.

A woman in Portland, Oregon, [disappeared for about two weeks](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/jul/11/congresswoman-tracks-down-us-citizen-children-deta/), reportedly held without charges or access to a lawyer while her family searched for her. A congresswoman finally located her at a Customs and Border Protection facility.

And this fall, [ICE stopped publicly revealing the whereabouts](https://apnews.com/article/ice-detainee-locator-disappear-removal-orders-c3329a70bce424879bc5880b286c019c) of thousands of immigrants with final deportation orders, making it difficult for lawyers or family members to find them.

That’s why The Marshall Project on Tuesday filed [a lawsuit](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28825226-tmpvicecbp-complaint/) against ICE and CBP in federal court to force the agencies to publicly disclose all the people in their custody. The suit, filed on The Marshall Project’s behalf by Chicago-based public-interest law firm Loevy & Loevy, seeks access to the names, ages and locations of everyone in ICE’s detention database.

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ICE rarely publicly reveals the identity of people it detains, and immigration attorneys have said the federal government sometimes ignores their requests for information on their clients. The agency maintains a searchable online locator, but attorneys and advocates say it’s often unreliable, not updated quickly enough and fails to include everyone in detention.

ICE’s operations contrast with local and state law enforcement. When police make an arrest, that person’s identity, criminal charges and detention location are made public in nearly every jurisdiction in the United States. Local jail rosters, including people’s names and ages, are routinely posted online.

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The Marshall Project first submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in April to ICE and CBP for access to the names, dates of birth and current detention locations for all entries in ICE’s Enforcement Integrated Database, which contains records of detainees in the immigration system.

ICE and CBP denied the FOIA requests and subsequent administrative appeals. In its denials, ICE cited privacy protections in FOIA, including a provision that prevents release of federal law enforcement records if disclosure “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

When federal agencies deny requests and appeals for public information, the only remaining recourse is a lawsuit. Courts have previously allowed federal law enforcement agencies such as ICE to withhold names to protect people’s privacy, but those precedents are now being challenged in light of ICE’s recent operations.