PORTLAND — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Abdullahi Mohamed near Portland, Maine, in October 2025 during a routine check-in and deported him to Somalia after holding him for more than seven weeks, much of it in Massachusetts. ICE moved Mohamed repeatedly across multiple states without notifying his family or attorney, leaving them to piece together his whereabouts through fragmented communications.
Mohamed’s family learned he was in Mississippi from an email by his lawyer, heard he was in Louisiana from another detainee’s spouse, and received a two-minute call from him from an undisclosed airport before his removal. His lawyer wrote in an email that ICE is increasingly transferring detainees without notice, which blocks attorney access, complicates legal filings in the correct jurisdiction, and causes distress to families.
From the final year of the Biden administration to the first year of Trump’s latest term, ICE more than tripled the number of detainees transferred five or more times and more than doubled those moved out of state within 24 hours, according to a Marshall Project analysis of ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. Rapid transfers often leave detainees unreachable for hours or days due to limited phone access and delays in ICE’s online locator system updating their location.
Immigration attorneys report that during communication gaps caused by such transfers, some detainees have been pressured to sign immigration forms before consulting counsel. Eza Nour, Mohamed’s niece, said: “I think the whole point was to traumatize us, and leave us with a lasting scar.” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an Ohio State University law professor, said in a podcast interview: “What often happens is that a lawyer or family member will show up to see somebody and be told, ‘That person’s not here, and we don’t know where they are.’ Effectively, that person has just disappeared while in the custody of the U.S. government.”
An ICE spokesperson stated in an email that claims transfers are being “weaponized” are “categorically false,” and that “all detainees receive full due process.” The spokesperson added that detainees have access to phones, receive a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys, and can be “easily” located through ICE’s online detainee locator.
Mohamed, who came to the U.S. from Somalia in 1999 and applied for asylum, had lived in Maine for years under an order of supervision, working as a cab driver and maintaining a valid work permit. An immigration judge ordered his removal in 2001, but deportations to Somalia were long unfeasible due to the country’s instability. His deportation followed a July 2025 Department of Homeland Security policy change that reclassified long-term residents like Mohamed as “arriving aliens,” making them ineligible for bond hearings. The Board of Immigration Appeals made that interpretation binding nationwide in September 2025.