Status as of September 10, 2026. The official search tool is at locator.ice.gov. Since early 2025 it has been updating late: on April 6, 2026, a group of 32 members of Congress asked the DHS Inspector General to investigate the system, writing that records now take days and sometimes weeks to appear, and that some people are deported before their location is entered at all. A missing record does not mean a person is not detained.
The ICE Detainee Locator, formally the Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS), is a public database that lets relatives, attorneys and anyone else check whether a specific person is in immigration detention and at which facility. What follows is what the search requires, how to read the result, why someone may be missing from the database, and which official channels exist when the online search turns up nothing.
In short
The search takes either an A-Number plus country of birth, or a first name, last name and country of birth. It matches exactly and covers adults only.
Records of people who have left ICE custody stay searchable for up to 60 days. An "not in custody" result does not say whether the person was released, removed from the country, or transferred to another agency. The system never shows a deportation.
As of September 2026, delayed entries are a documented failure of the system, not a user error. Parallel official channels exist: the ICE public line, ERO field offices, the facilities themselves, the immigration court system, and consulates.
Contents
What you need to search for someone in ICE custody
One of two sets of data: an A-Number and country of birth, or a first name, last name and country of birth. A date of birth is optional and narrows the results when there are several matches. The search is free and requires no account.
The database covers people currently in ICE custody and those who left ICE custody within the past 60 days. A transfer from one ICE facility to another is not an exit from custody: once the person is booked in at the new location, the record should show them in custody again. Separately, the locator can be used to search for people who have been in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody for more than 48 hours.
According to ICE's own guidance, people under 18 do not appear in the system at all, and some detainees are not entered immediately because of processing and upload time. The agency adds a broader caveat: safety, security and agency discretion keep some people out of the locator entirely. Heightened confidentiality applies by statute to VAWA self-petitioners and to T and U visa applicants, and practitioners note that such applicants may not turn up in the database.
Where to find the alien registration number
The A-Number is the person's unique identifier in the immigration system: the letter "A" followed by eight or nine digits. It appears on immigration documents and on correspondence from the Department of Homeland Security and the immigration courts.
Form I-862 (Notice to Appear) — upper right corner;
a green card or Employment Authorization Document (EAD);
any USCIS notice or receipt, and any hearing notice or decision from immigration court.
Practicing attorneys point out that when a detained person gets a phone call home, the A-Number is the first thing worth writing down, because a search by number does not depend on how a name was typed. If the number has eight digits, a leading zero is added when entering it into the immigration court systems.
How to search the ICE Detainee Locator step by step
Open locator.ice.gov. The interface is available in several languages, and ICE publishes its information brochures in Russian and Spanish among others.
Choose one of two modes: search by A-Number, or search by biographical information.
Enter the data and clear the security check (captcha).
If nothing comes back, repeat with other spellings of the name.
The defining feature is exact matching. It exists so the database does not expose more detainee information than necessary, but it means a query for "Robert Smith" will not return a record for "Robert Smyth" or "Bob Smith." The name has to be entered exactly as the officer recorded it at booking. Hence the usual failures: first and last names swapped, only one of two surnames used, a different transliteration, accented characters, or a typo made by the officer.
One more detail ICE flags in the site's privacy notice: the system logs technical information about visitors, including IP addresses.
What the search result means
There are three outcomes.
Found, in custody. The result gives the name and address of the facility, its phone number, and contact details for the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) field office handling the case.
Found, not in custody. The person left ICE custody within the past 60 days. Released, removed from the United States, or turned over to another agency — the system does not say which.
Nothing found. The person has not been entered, was entered under a different spelling, or is not in immigration detention.
Sometimes the result is an instruction to call ICE or a field office instead of a facility name. The April 6, 2026 congressional letter treats that response as a symptom: its authors specifically ask the agency when it is used now and how often it was used before.
What the database never shows is removal. People disappear from the results the same way whether they were released, handed to another agency, or deported.
Even a positive result is worth confirming by phone: records lag, and a person can be moved before the database catches up.
Why someone may not appear in the system
Too little time has passed. ICE has historically cited an eight-hour window for updating records on arrival, transfer or departure from a facility, while warning that a new record may not appear right away because of processing and upload time. People in CBP custody become searchable after 48 hours. Attorneys note that for roughly the first three days the location often does not display until the person reaches their final facility.
The person is in transit. The database used to show the previous facility until the person was booked in at the new one. As the congressional letter describes it, people in transit now often do not show up at all, sometimes for days.
The person is under 18. Minors do not appear in the locator, period.
The case involves victim-based protection. Confidentiality rules covering VAWA, T and U cases are strict, and such applicants may not be listed.
The person is held somewhere unconventional. ERO offices, Border Patrol stations, military bases, state-run facilities. Lawmakers point directly to systematic gaps at these sites.
The data was entered differently, or wrongly. Exact matching forgives neither a typo nor a different name order.
More than 60 days have passed since the person left ICE custody — the record is removed.
The custody is criminal, not civil immigration custody. Illegal reentry prosecutions, for example, put people in the Bureau of Prisons system or a county jail instead.
What to do when the search returns nothing
Agency materials and practitioner guides describe the following sequence, running from quick steps to slower ones.
Run the search again with name variations, and again a few hours later.
Call the ICE Detention Reporting and Information Line (DRIL) at 1-888-351-4024. Per the agency, live operators are available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, with language assistance; basic case information is among the listed topics.
Contact the ERO field office covering the place of arrest — office directory. Attorneys note that even when the office will not discuss a specific person, it may say which facilities it typically uses, which narrows the search.
Call the likely facilities from the detention facility directory. Under ICE guidance, a facility is expected to make a good-faith effort to identify a specific detainee when given other identifying information — so the absence of an A-Number is not by itself grounds for refusal.
Check the immigration court system by A-Number (below). The court location is an indirect clue to the region of detention.
If a local arrest came first, ask the county jail whether an immigration detainer has been lodged and when transfer is expected.
Check the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator if criminal charges such as illegal reentry are possible.
Contact the consulate of the person's country of citizenship (below).
Bring in an attorney. According to guidance from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, filing Form G-28 through the ERO electronic system does not reveal a location, but with the A-Number it lets a representative confirm that the person is recorded as being in ICE custody.
Official phone numbers and resources
Resource | What it is for |
|---|---|
locator.ice.gov | Searching for an adult in ICE or CBP custody |
1-888-351-4024 (DRIL) | ICE public line: basic case information and problems in detention |
ice.gov/contact/field-offices | ERO field offices by region |
ice.gov/detention-facilities | Facility addresses, visiting hours, calls and deliveries |
1-800-898-7180 / acis.eoir.justice.gov | Hearing date and location, judge's decision, appeal status by A-Number |
1-800-203-7001 | Office of Refugee Resettlement call center: unaccompanied children |
bop.gov/inmateloc | Federal prisons, when the case is criminal rather than civil |
How to check an immigration court date online
A parallel and often steadier system is the immigration courts' automated case information service, available around the clock at 1-800-898-7180 and online at acis.eoir.justice.gov. It asks for the A-Number and nationality; an eight-digit number takes a leading zero. English and Spanish.
By the agency's own description, the service gives the date, time and location of the next hearing, case processing information, the immigration judge's decision, and Board of Immigration Appeals information including filing deadlines.
Limits: it shows only the most recent case under a given A-Number, not every case or every detail, and the agency directs people to the local court for bond hearing information. Court-issued paper notices, not the automated system, are the official record.
If the person detained is under 18
Children under 18 do not appear in the ICE database. Unaccompanied children are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services, a separate system with its own rules.
Parents and legal guardians contact the ORR National Call Center at 1-800-203-7001 or information@ORRNCC.com. As the department describes it, the operator takes the information and sends it to the shelter where the child is located, and shelter staff respond after verifying the caller's identity and relationship, including through the family in the country of origin. The department asks members of the public who are not searching for a child to keep the line free.
When children are detained along with their parents, the adults appear in the ICE database and the children do not. ERO has designated juvenile coordinators, whom attorneys reach through the relevant field office.
Consular notification: which countries are on the mandatory list
The State Department maintains a list of countries whose consulates must be notified when their nationals are detained — regardless of whether the detained person wants that. The list includes, among others, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova.
For nationals of other countries, notification happens at the detained person's option, but the right to communicate with a consular officer applies either way. In practice consulates ask for proof of relationship before telling relatives anything, and they work at very different speeds.
One point belongs with an attorney rather than a family decision made in a hurry: guidance for law enforcement directs officials not to disclose to a consulate that someone has applied for asylum, even for nationals of mandatory notification countries. For a person seeking protection from the authorities of their own country, contact with that country's consulate is not a formality but a step with consequences for the case.
The first three days and why they decide so much
CBP says it generally tries not to hold people in its facilities longer than 72 hours, but the actual time depends on how quickly a case is processed and the person is transferred, released or repatriated; in practice those windows are often exceeded. Separate statutory rules govern the transfer of unaccompanied children to ORR. The database threshold is a different number: people in CBP custody become searchable after 48 hours. Until someone reaches their final facility, the location usually does not display.
These are also the days that settle questions which are hard to undo: where the person ends up geographically, which court hears the case, whether bond is set. Transfers in 2026 are more frequent than before — lawmakers say the transfer rate has more than doubled compared with 2024 — and people are routinely moved hundreds of miles from family and counsel.
Why lawmakers demanded an investigation into the system
Since January 2025, complaints about the database have moved from anecdote into official correspondence. In their April 6, 2026 letter to the DHS Inspector General, the authors argue that without a functioning locator the department is effectively creating disappearances on U.S. soil, and they identify three drivers.
Scale. More than 70,000 people are in ICE custody, against roughly 39,000 in December 2024, with a stated goal above 90,000 beds. Growing by more than 80 percent in a year has strained the agency's systems.
Transfers. Their frequency has more than doubled, and the way people in transit are displayed has changed in the direction of less visibility.
New sites. Military bases, the agency's own field offices, and facilities stood up by states. At one such site in Florida, reporters could not establish the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men held there over a single month.
The consequences are described in the same letter: attorneys do not know where to file a habeas petition because they do not know where their client is, and families learn about a removal after the fact. Publication of the agency's own detention statistics has also been irregular in 2026.
For someone searching for a relative, one conclusion follows: an empty result is not an answer, it is a reason to move to other channels.
Scams that target families of detained people
The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general report a rise in schemes aimed specifically at families of detained people. The pattern repeats:
first contact through social media or messaging app ads, often using the logos of real law firms and charities;
fake notices of a bond that has supposedly been set, sometimes staged as a video hearing;
payments broken into pieces: a "retainer," then a "filing fee," then a "tax" — thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in total;
payment methods that cannot be reversed: wires, cash, deposits to a personal account;
guaranteed outcomes and pressure to pay immediately.
Facts worth checking against: an immigration bond is posted through ICE's official process, and the acceptable payment methods should be confirmed with the agency itself — a demand to send money to a private person, a "court agent" or a personal account is a direct sign of fraud. Only a licensed attorney or an accredited representative of a recognized organization may represent someone in an immigration case; a "notario" or "immigration consultant" may not, since a notary public credential in the United States confers no authority to provide legal services. The California Attorney General issued a consumer alert covering, among other things, the search for detained relatives. Fraud can be reported at reportfraud.ftc.gov.
Common mistakes when searching
Searching by a nickname or short form instead of the full name from the documents.
Trying one spelling and stopping there.
Reading "not in custody" as a synonym for released.
Staying online and never calling the facility or the field office.
Waiting a week for the person to "show up" instead of checking the court system and the consulate in parallel.
Sending money in response to a call or message without verifying the source.
Frequently asked questions
How long before someone appears in the database?
The agency's benchmark is eight hours from arrival at a facility, and people in CBP custody become searchable after 48 hours. ICE also warns that a record may not appear immediately. In practice, according to the April 2026 congressional letter, it takes two to three days and sometimes weeks.
What does it mean when the search finds nothing?
That there is no record in the database. It neither confirms nor rules out detention: there are at least eight possible reasons, from a recent arrest and transit to a different spelling of the name or custody at a site that is not uploaded to the system.
Can the database tell me whether someone has been deported?
No. The system does not show removals. A record disappears the same way whether the person was released, handed to another agency, or deported.
Is the A-Number required to search?
No, a search by first name, last name and country of birth is possible. But a search by number is more reliable, because it does not depend on how the name was recorded.
Do children appear in the database?
No. People under 18 are not shown. Unaccompanied children are located through the Office of Refugee Resettlement call center.
Who is allowed to use the locator?
It is a public system with no restriction on who may search; relatives, attorneys and organizations all use it. Getting further details from the agency, a consulate or a shelter, however, usually requires proof of relationship or of authority to represent.
Official sources
Source | What it contains |
|---|---|
The search itself and the system's own FAQ | |
Database limits: 60 days, minors, upload delays | |
Hours of operation and the topics the line covers | |
Case status and hearing date by A-Number | |
Short government instructions and links to related services | |
Documented failures, their causes, and questions put to the agency | |
List of mandatory notification countries |
We are journalists, not lawyers. This piece is our attempt to work out how the official search for detained people is built and which channels exist when it fails. It contains no legal advice and no assessment of any individual case: decisions about a detained person, from bond to signing documents, belong with a licensed immigration attorney or an accredited representative of a recognized organization. The information is current as of September 10, 2026; rules and practice change, so check the official sources linked above before acting.