Legal groups sue ICE over withheld detainee locations

Four immigrant legal-services organizations have filed a federal lawsuit in Boston seeking to block an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that withholds the locations of detainees with final removal orders from the agency’s public locator system. The groups say the change makes it difficult or impossible for attorneys to find clients and pursue legal challenges to detention or removal. The complaint says the policy affected more than 16,000 people out of nearly 69,000 in ICE custody as of the previous month. It asks a judge to stop the practice and restore access to location information. The lawsuit names Greater Boston Legal Services, the Rian Immigrant Center, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights as plaintiffs. The groups allege that lawyers have spent more time trying to locate clients and that the change has delayed or caused missed legal filings and reduced the number of cases organizations can take. They say calls to ICE information lines can involve long waits, abrupt disconnections, or a lack of useful information. Some lawyers have tried an ICE program for scheduling legal calls, but the complaint says...