The Marshall Project today filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C., against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to force the agencies to publicly disclose everyone 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. The case is believed to be the first lawsuit seeking access to the full, nationwide database since President Donald Trump returned to office. A similar but narrower case filed by Loevy & Loevy on behalf of Block Club Chicago, a local nonprofit news outlet, is now on appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but that case seeks information only on people detained in Chicago during a 10-day period in January 2025.
Jennifer Peter, The Marshall Project’s editor-in-chief, said the nonprofit news organization filed the lawsuit to hold ICE to the same basic standard of public disclosure and accountability as local police.
“We are seeking the same transparency and access to information that have existed within the criminal justice system for centuries. Detainees’ family members and those seeking to defend their rights deserve to know at least where they are being held,” Peter said. “To withhold that information in the name of privacy does not serve the best interest of the people whose privacy the government alleges to protect. It makes it far more difficult for their loved ones and attorneys to help them — and for organizations like The Marshall Project to shine a light on what’s truly happening within immigration camps and who’s being held there.”
Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, ICE and CBP have expanded their reach and, according to numerous media reports, secretly detained people — without access to their lawyers and family — for hours, days and, in some cases, weeks at a time. Marshall Project reporting revealed the story of a man who vanished for five days last December while ICE shuttled him through detention camps around the country. By the time his family learned where he was, he had been deported to Somalia. In another example, a woman in Portland, Oregon, disappeared for about two weeks, reportedly held without charges or access to a lawyer while her family searched for her; a congresswoman finally located her at a CBP facility. And this fall, ICE stopped publicly revealing the whereabouts of thousands of immigrants with final deportation orders, making it difficult for lawyers and family members to find them.
While ICE maintains a searchable online locator, attorneys and advocates say it is often unreliable, fails to include everyone in detention and is not updated quickly enough. These opaque practices are in contrast with those of 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, and local jail rosters are routinely posted online.
The Marshall Project first submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to ICE and CBP in April, seeking 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.
Both agencies denied the request and subsequent administrative appeals. In its denials, ICE cited privacy protections in FOIA, including a provision that bars 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, such as the one filed by The Marshall Project today.
About The Marshall Project
The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. justice and immigration systems. We have an impact on the system through journalism, rendering it more fair, effective, transparent and humane. Since President Donald Trump retook office in January 2025 we have expanded our coverage of immigration and the overlap between immigrant detention and the criminal justice system.