‘Secret and unaccountable’: Where some immigrant teens are being taken by ICE
Blake Ellis-Profile-ImageMelanie Hicken
By Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, CNN
Updated 6:12 AM ET, Thu October 24, 2019
(CNN)Angelina Godoy started digging for answers more than a year ago.
The human rights researcher had heard that ICE agents occasionally swept up migrant kids and locked them up in juvenile detention facilities, but she had no idea why.
One of the places ICE supposedly housed these young people, Godoy learned, was a few hours from her home in Seattle. She searched online for information about the detentions, but couldn’t find anything that explained what was going on. She then filed a series of public records requests with officials at the juvenile detention center closest to her, hoping they could shed light on what ICE was doing and why these minors were being held in places run more like jails than the shelters most migrant children end up in when they are detained. She had specifically requested detailed detainee files, with names and personal information redacted, and the facility was ready to share them with her.