The Legal Aid Society, along with several other immigrant advocacy organizations, reaffirmed calls on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to end its recent practice of abruptly transferring detained clients in the NYC area to detention centers in other parts of the country, including Louisiana, Alabama, and Pennsylvania, with zero notice to attorneys, reports Gothamist/WNYC.

Since January 20, 2021, between all six organizations, at least 22 clients have been transferred without any notice. The organizations also again called on ICE to immediately release all recently-transferred individuals as well as all those currently detained in the NYC area.

The transfer concerns were first raised with ICE in correspondence issued June 4, 2021. ICE has yet to reply. As the letter detailed, in many cases, detained individuals seemed to have simply disappeared, with ICE deportation officers refusing to respond to reasonable inquiries from counsel about their clients’ whereabouts.

Additionally, ICE/jail correctional officers have spread inconsistent and misleading information among detained people about mass transfers, especially at the Hudson County Correctional Facility. These transfers, which happened without notice to the attorneys of record or even to detained individuals themselves, have serious implications for an immigrant’s ability to access counsel, evidence, and witnesses for their cases, and to contact and be supported by their family members and other loved ones.

“From what we’re hearing, it’s horrifying and absolutely terrifying. People who are detained by ICE are [transferred] without any notice to them or their attorneys. They’re not told where they’re going. They’re not told if they’re being put on a plane and deported,” said Sharone Schwartz Kaufman, Esq., Deputy Attorney-in-Charge of NYIFUP & the Federal Practice with Immigration Law Unit at The Legal Aid Society.