ICE sued for refusing to return detainees’ papers and property

Seven people detained previously by ICE filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the agency, accusing it of illegally refusing to return their personal documents and belongings months after they were released from custody. 

Items allegedly withheld include Social Security cards, employment authorization documents, and phones, which the seven individuals allege is a violation of the Fourth Amendment—and ICE’s own confiscation directive, which only permits officers to keep belongings for a clearly defined reason, such as relation to a criminal case. 

The ACLU of the District of Columbia, one of the bodies representing the seven plaintiffs, pointed in part to a 2024 federal appeals court ruling in Washington, DC, that barred that city’s police from holding personal property they seize for what the court deemed an unreasonable length of time. 

Withholding items like employment documents prevents immigrants from being able to keep their jobs, the suit contends—at least some of the plaintiffs attest that they have indeed lost their jobs—and makes them fear leaving their homes due to lack of documentation. 

One plaintiff from Russia with a pending asylum case, Vladimir Izmailov, was “unable to get meaningful employment without his work authorization documents,” ACLU of DC wrote—the suit details that ICE hasn’t returned these documents, and other items including his wedding ring, for more than five months. 

“Now, I’m struggling to provide for my family because ICE still has my documents that show I am authorized to work,” Izmailov stated; he said that he has been forced to borrow money to make rent and continue to house himself, his wife, and their two children. 

The lawsuit comes following a series of reports of similar incidents. My colleague Julia Lurie wrote about cases in Minnesota in February: “It’s more the rule than the exception that people generally are not given their stuff back,” Graham Ojala-Barbour, a Minneapolis immigration attorney, said in an interview for that article. “As far as I can tell, it’s the practice of ICE to throw everybody’s documents into a black box and then lose it.”

As she reported at the time:

Federal law requires noncitizens to carry proof of their lawful status. “The government not returning these documents to folks is essentially forcing them to walk around without this document that the government itself says these folks are supposed to carry with them,” says Julia Decker, policy director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to order ICE to return their items—and to stop the agency from continuing to unlawfully retain property without just reason.