“They have masks on their faces. You can’t tell who they are,” said Innovation Law Lab’s (ILL) Communications Manager Victor Romero Hernandez of ICE agents in recent months. “ICE has become a lot more violent and aggressive, and a lot less transparent,” he told me.

Romero Hernandez says detentions used to be much more reliably tracked than they are currently. On the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, a search engine called “The Online Detainee Locator” (ODLS) is displayed. An individual believed to be in ICE custody can be searched on the system using the individual’s Alien Registration Number or alternately, using first name, last name, and country of birth.

On the website, ICE notes that “[f]or security reasons, ODLS does not provide information about transfers that are planned or in progress.” However, “Once a person is transferred and booked into another ICE detention facility, ODLS will be updated with that information.“

According to Romero Hernandez, the information about detainee location that ICE says it provides is not consistently made available. “It used to be that they [ICE] would detain somebody and then they would appear on the ICE identifier,” he said. “Now, not as often.”

Innovation Law Lab is a Portland based immigrant advocacy organization, with “team members in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Washington, and Mexico,” its website states.

The organization was founded in response to the detention of Central American migrants at covert facilities near Artesia, New Mexico over a decade ago. These were “secret detention facilities in very remote areas,” said Romero Hernandez.

Cell and wifi service were limited or nonexistent in these areas, so Innovation Law Lab “built a software system to support immigration attorneys” where they had previously been hindered in their work for lack of access.

Now, the work of Innovation Law Lab is three-pronged. “[W]e use the law, technology, and organizing to advance the immigration movement,” Romero Hernandez said.

Lately, he says, everyone’s workload at ILL has “gotten a lot heavier.” With an increase in detentions, he says their attorneys have had to respond very quickly to a lot of cases. Meanwhile, those working in advocacy for the organization have been focused on lobbying to maintain free and low-cost immigration services in Oregon through the Equity Corps of Oregon.

“As a formerly undocumented person, I can speak to how hard it is to stay on top of rent and food on top of trying to pay attorneys and legal experts,” Romero Hernandez said.

In recent months, immigration proceedings at courthouses have attracted ICE agents and resulted in detentions, he told me. When ICE teams detain individuals they often “don’t have identification,” he stated.

“We think about these as kidnappings,” Romero Hernandez continued. “It’s […] like kidnapping, where people are snatched off the streets in unmarked vans.”

*Shared with permission from a Yamhill county Substack writer