As immigrants keep being apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), many with little to no due process, attorneys across the country are scrambling to defend clients and are denouncing human rights abuses while in custody. However, one major obstacle is preventing lawyers and families from contacting detainees— once they go into the system, many of them seemingly disappear.
That was the case of Felix Morales Reyna, a 28-year-old Mexican father who was detained by ICE earlier this year in Alvarado, Texas. His initial records showed he was placed 30 miles south of his home in Fort Worth in a detention facility earlier this year. However, he was actually more than 200 miles north in Cushing, Okla.
By the time his legal representatives found him, he had been moved to Aurora, Colo.— but his case had inexplicably moved to Anson, Texas.
Over three months, as Morales was shuttled through detention centers in Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico and California, his family and lawyers say they received no notice of his whereabouts. His legal case bounced through at least three jurisdictions different from his physical location, The Wall Street Journal reports.
"You'd file a bond motion and it would just get rejected as 'We don't have jurisdiction over that case,'" said his paralegal Andrea Avila, adding that she refiled the bond motion 20 times.
Frequent transfers have become a popular strategy in the second Trump administration, according to the outlet. Lawyers describe a trend where their clients are disappearing into an opaque and labyrinthine system that is obstructing their ability to defend themselves in court.
Some attorneys acknowledge that occasional moves are inevitable as detention centers have started to become overcrowded, but say their distance and frequency is unprecedented and illogical.
"They happen abruptly, they happen overnight," said Eloa Celedon, a Massachusetts-based immigration lawyer, adding that this happens in about half her cases.
Frequent transfers are not unique to the Trump administration. In fact, some immigrant advocacy groups complained of increasing detainee transfers under the Biden administration. However, the levels of transfer flights have quickly accelerated, bringing more chaos and confusion to an already overcrowded system.
Data collected by Tom Cartwright, an immigration advocate who tracks ICE flights, shows that domestic flights by the agency— including flights from the border to detention centers and between facilities— are higher now than they were at any point since he started recording them in 2020, despite fewer people crossing the border. The agency flew 727 domestic legs in July, up from an average of 350 a month during the Biden administration.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration assures there is nothing to worry about, and that complaints are being blown out of proportion.
"ICE does not 'disappear' people," said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. "The appropriate process due to an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple," she said, adding, "That said, DHS has a stringent law enforcement assessment in place that abides by due process under the U.S. Constitution."
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