ICE Has Script to Refuse Help to People Looking for Missing Loved Ones

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deliberately kept certain detainees out of a public database to make them harder to find.

The New York Times reports that tens of thousands of people with final deportation orders have been hidden from the database since September, confirming earlier media reports. This policy change has made it almost impossible for lawyers and family members to find their loved ones’ locations, and ICE’s contractors were given a script to use on callers informing them that the detainees’ locations were no longer available.

ICE’s detention system encompasses over 300 facilities and was already chaotic before the change. Detained immigrants are quickly sent from one facility to another, and if their lawyers don’t know where they are, legal help is severely hindered. It’s a boon to the Trump administration’s efforts to deport large numbers of immigrants quickly without the obstacles of habeas petitions and other forms of due process.

If lawyers know where their clients are being held, they can fight their deportation orders and try to secure their release. But those options are almost wiped out after a person is deported, and if they’re missing from ICE’s system, they are almost doomed. Detainees could also be prevented from making phone calls or buying essential personal items like toiletries because someone on the outside can’t deposit money into their commissary account without knowing which facility they’re in.

One immigrant that the Times highlights is University of San Francisco nurse and professor Ann Lawani, who was detained in her pajamas from her home in Lodi, California, on September 16. Even after calling her family from a holding facility that day, her attorney and siblings still couldn’t figure out where she was.

“It was the worst time of my life, knowing she had been siphoned into an abyss and there was nothing I could do about it,” her brother, U.S. citizen Sam Lawani, told the Times.

When her lawyer, Natalia Vieira Santanna, tried to file a habeas petition, she did so in California, Lawani’s last known location. But DHS tried to get her petition transferred to Louisiana, where they had moved her, which would have restarted Lawani’s case and required a new lawyer. Vieira opposed that effort, pointing out that Lawani’s location was kept secret, and the judge in the case agreed, finding that “no diligent attorney could have known” where Lawani was.

The judge also blocked the federal government from deporting Lawani while her habeas petition was in progress, and ordered officials to explain why she shouldn’t be released. While she is in the country right now, Lawani’s location still isn’t in the public database, and other detainees have not been fortunate enough to have her resources and support.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot a Colombian man in Maine earlier this year had a history of making vehemently racist remarks.

Four years before he joined ICE, David Brouillette ranted against his sister over her relationship with a 37-year-old Colombian Ph.D. student, with whom she had two children.

“He can takes his non citizen ass back to his country and enjoy his third world luxuries,” Brouillette wrote in a 2021 email thread, which was shared with The New York Times by his sister, Elizabeth Emen. The emails were sent to Emen and other family members, and were confirmed by a friend whom Emen discussed the messages with and a family representative.

“David had no basis for saying that my partner was undocumented,” Emen, a licensed therapist in Maryland, told the Times. “It was about how he saw him based on his race.”

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, age 25, who was shot and killed by Brouillette during a traffic stop in July, was in the United States legally, like Emen’s partner. ICE quietly admitted that it had a warrant for a different person and that Guerrero was never a target.

In the emails, Brouillette claimed that his sister’s boyfriend’s “bloodline knows nothing about what it takes to earn and then CHERISH the freedom America offers.”

“He does not emulate what it means to be an American” but “rather he emulates what it’s like to be entitled and think he has a seat” at a table “that has no room for his (or your ignorance),” Brouillette wrote.

Brouillette’s family said that he never attempted to hide his sentiments about immigrants. His relatives previously revealed that he had a history of violent and abusive behavior, including attacks on the women and girls in his life. But after President Donald Trump’s sweeping mandate to increase the number of deportations, ICE relaxed its vetting process in order to enlist thousands of new so-called “homeland defenders,” which allowed many unqualified candidates—even some with criminal records—to join the federal agency’s ranks.

“He is dangerous and should not have weapons,” Susan Bedard, Brouillette’s mother, told the Times. “Believe his victims, not him.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been going to college football games on the taxpayer’s dime.

The Washington Post reports that Rubio almost never misses a University of Florida Gators football game, as his son Anthony is a walk-on running back for the team. Since taking office in 2025, Rubio has flown to at least 10 football games on government planes, including a military C-37 jet earlier this month, landing at Gainesville Regional Airport in the Sunshine State before being met by security officers in unmarked SUVs. Anthony Rubio, a senior, has only played in four games in four years.

The elder Rubio, a UF alumnus, traveled to Gainesville’s airport on government aircraft at least 23 times as a Cabinet official, 15 of which the State Department classified as solely personal. The flights have cost taxpayers more than $1.2 million, according to a Post review of the Defense Department’s published costs. Former department officials told the newspaper that Rubio takes personal trips much more often than previous secretaries of state.

Rubio is barred from taking commercial flights in his position for security reasons, just like the defense secretary, attorney general, and heads of the CIA and FBI. He is required to reimburse the government the cost of an economy-class plane ticket for every personal trip he takes. Those reimbursements are rarely made public and only cover a small part of the true cost of a government flight, according to the Post.

When contacted by the newspaper, neither Rubio nor the State Department disclosed how much he has paid back to the government. In a statement, Rubio said, “I have and will continue to try and make it to as many events that are important to me personally and to my family as possible.”

Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson told the Post that Rubio takes military planes to “ensure continuity of operations, continuity of government and access to secure communications at all times. And he will continue to do so.”

While Rubio’s government flight habits are less egregious than those of FBI Director Kash Patel, who tends to look for any exotic locale where he can party, they do raise questions about misusing taxpayer funds. As the country’s top diplomat, Rubio’s plane trips are supposed to mostly be to represent the U.S. and its interests overseas. According to the Post, he should be paying the government back anywhere from $18,000 to upward of $30,000 for his personal excursions to Florida alone.

Nobody is buying Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s claim that he was a Democrat this whole time, right?

In an exclusive interview with Politico’s Playbook, the technocrat posed as a staunch progressive, following Democrats’ sweeping midterm election victories in the House and Senate.

“I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I grew up in a far-left environment. I know more about being a progressive than almost anybody on the planet, and I absolutely believe Palantir—all of our products are essentially progressive,” Karp said in an interview where he used the word “progressive” eight times to describe himself.

This is a pretty significant shift from just eight months ago, when the CEO appeared desperate to align his technology with GOP political strategy as a method to sap political capital away from the Trump administration’s enemies.

“This technology disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters,” Karp said in March, admitting that his technology was “dangerous societally” but would allow us to “be American” in the future.

Now Karp claims that his company is chiefly concerned with “economic justice” and that he believes that Trump’s immigration policies “went too far.” Of course, Palantir’s technologies were essential in implementing the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation agenda. The company even developed an app that provided ICE agents with a digital map populated by potential deportation targets.

The technocrat’s self-proclaimed “anti-woke” company reaped billions of dollars in federal contracts during the second Trump administration. The company just hired former Republican Senator Jon Tester as an adviser ahead of likely congressional investigations.

“My giving is equal Democrat, Republican,” Karp told Politico. “I can tell you, without going into things I’m not going to disclose, I’m very balanced, and everyone in the political arena knows it. And I’ll tell you what, I’m also not the village idiot.”

Karp may not be the village idiot, but he clearly thinks the American public isn’t smart enough to see through his ridiculous facade.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is losing support from even moderate members of the Democratic caucus.

Virginia Senator Mark Warner is not committing to supporting Schumer for majority leader next year, the Virginia Scope reports, telling the publication: “We got to reflect in leadership the real talents.” Warner’s new comments follow his praise for Schumer on Tuesday for raising an “enormous” amount of money for Democrats in the midterms and for recruiting many of the winners this election.

Warner’s stance follows Senator Bernie Sanders, who said in a press conference on  Tuesday, “Nobody works harder than Chuck Schumer, but in my view, the time is now for change, and I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader.”

Other senators and senators-elect refusing to commit to Schumer include Elissa Slotkin, Abdul El-Sayed, Richard Blumenthal, Juliana Stratton, Peggy Flanagan, Adam Hamilton, Troy Jackson, Chris Pappas, Annie Andrews, and James Talarico.

The alternative candidate gaining steam is Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is open to the idea and criticized Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for siding “with the crypto industry” and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a press conference on Tuesday.

“I am listening to all the people from around the country that were calling for big change,” Van Hollen said, noting that two of the Democrats’ incoming senators, El-Sayed and Flanagan, didn’t receive support from Schumer and the DSCC. “I am in the process right now of calling my colleagues.”