Human rights advocates asked a United Nations panel to intervene Wednesday to help end a new U.S. government practice of withholding from families and lawyers the whereabouts of thousands of detainees facing deportation.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed the names of detainees with final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System on Sept. 15 in an apparent effort to speed up their deportations. The change, which ICE did not announce and has not explained, applies to more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees who are in ICE custody.
