U.S. Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-M.A.) recently co-led a letter signed by more than 30 members of Congress — including fellow Democratic New Mexico U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich — asking the Department of Homeland Security Investigator General to investigate problems with the online locator system used to track immigrant detainees’ locations.
“Without a functional locator system,” the letter said. “DHS is effectively creating ‘disappearances’ on U.S. soil.”
Prior to the Trump administration, the lawmakers contend, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would update its Online Detainee Locator System within eight hours of detainees’ arrival at its facilities, and the Customs and Border Protection would do so within 48 hours. Detainees’ families and lawyers now say it can take up to several weeks for detainees’ information to appear in the system, and sometimes they will not show up at all. The letter notes that congressional offices have experienced similar problems using the system to locate constituents, and says some detainees have been deported prior to being entered into the system. The letter also remarks upon instances of inaccurate information in the online system.
The lawmakers’ letter attributes the problems with the ODLS to the increased scale of detention, increased use of transfers and to what it calls “systematic failures at new facilities.”
DHS did not provide an immediate response to a request for comment.
These issues have led to detainees’ lawyers being unable to file necessary motions on their clients’ behalf, the lawmakers say in the letter, and to “terror” for families who do not know where their relatives have been taken.
The letter requests responses to a variety of questions about the current operation and oversight of the OLDS system.