A coalition of 36 members of Congress is raising alarms over immigration authorities' ability to locate detained immigrants, saying a faulty federal tracking system has effectively created "disappearances" within U.S. borders.
Led by Senator Elizabeth Warren, the group sent a letter demanding that the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general investigate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement online detainee locator system, known as ODLS. The tool has long served as the primary way for family members, lawyers, and journalists to find people held in the federal immigration detention network.
The lawmakers characterized the system as "increasingly unreliable," according to the letter obtained by the Guardian. The breakdown in tracking capability has left families unable to locate loved ones and legal representatives unable to monitor their clients' whereabouts, creating what the congressional delegation described as enforcement disappearances on American soil.
The ODLS has been in use for years, but the lawmakers' escalation suggests the platform's failures have worsened to the point where it now poses a serious oversight problem. Without a functioning system to account for detained individuals, there is little public visibility into where immigrants end up within the sprawling detention system operated by ICE.
The call for an inspector general investigation represents pressure from Democratic lawmakers to address what they view as a critical gap in accountability and transparency within immigration enforcement operations.
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