Ten days after he was sent by ICE to the Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, “D” was suddenly woken up by guards in the middle of the night.
“It was around 3 in the morning when they woke me and some others up. We knew nothing about what was happening, they told us nothing,” D said in his native Spanish. “They just came and ‘knocked knocked’ at the door saying ‘Get dressed, you’re leaving.’ They never gave us a reason – nothing.”
D, a Guatemalan immigrant who’s lived in Providence for the last 20 years, was detained by ICE in November. Ocean State Media is only referring to D by an initial because he has a pending immigration case.
D and several other detainees were transported in a cramped van to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Berlin, New Hampshire. He says his handcuffs were placed tight enough to draw blood, leaving scars on his wrists. He sat next to the van’s back door, the winter air flowing in. By the time they arrived, he said he couldn’t stop trembling.
D said he was terrified of what could happen next. But he kept it together, saying he didn’t want officers to see him scared.
“They’ll treat you badly if they see you get emotional. They’ll treat you badly. It’s better to be quiet and bear it,” D said.
In that cramped van, D was, without warning, transferred out of state, away from family and complicating the legal case his lawyer had filed in Rhode Island. And it appears that story is becoming more common among ICE detainees around the country.
Immigration lawyers and advocates say the speed at which ICE transfers some detainees between facilities effectively denies them access to legal counsel. A 2025 analysis by the LA Times found 12% of detainees had been transferred at least four times, a significant year-over-year increase.
The Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility did not respond to requests for information. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also did not respond.
D says the transfer process was terrifyingly uncertain. He thought he was being deported and had no idea if he would be able to contact his family. Once he reached the FCI, he worried he would suddenly be moved again, or deported without being able to say goodbye to his family in Rhode Island.
D was ultimately released from custody on bond in late December. He doesn’t know exactly why, but his lawyer credits U.S. citizen friends writing letters vouching for him, his long history of residence, and the fact that he is his school-aged nephew’s caretaker.
“I believe that it was a miracle of God, because in truth I never stopped praying and asking him to release me, to free me,” D said.
Transfers can delay legal cases
During President Trump’s second term, ICE’s reach is expanding. By the end of November 2025, ICE used 104 more facilities for immigration detention than at the start of the year – a 91% increase. OPB documented a five-fold increase in ICE transferring detainees more than 1,000 miles.
According to Elise McCaffery, a Pawtucket-based immigration attorney who represented D, having a client transferred to an out-of-state facility complicates nearly all aspects of immigration legal defense. It can take days, for instance, to locate where a client has been transferred. And different facilities may have radically different visitation procedures.
“It introduces all kinds of frustrations and difficulties in just being able to speak to your client, but the largest one is that you’re no longer able to sit with your client,” McCaffrey said. “You’re staring at them over a video screen, or you’re talking to them over the phone, it’s a completely different experience.”
Beyond adding another layer of uncertainty for detainees, McCaffrey says transfers destabilize the work she does in advance to provide evidence, legal arguments and testimony to a judge explaining why her client should be entitled to a certain form of relief. Transfers often whisk her clients to a new jurisdiction before their case is heard, potentially placing them before a judge who does not recognize the same legal protections afforded by judges in New England.
“Perhaps they lose out on certain rights and privileges available under the First Circuit, which is where they have lived, where their entire family is, where [many of] the facts that form the basis of their case are, and all of a sudden, now they’re in a completely different judicial forum,” McCaffrey said. “So, as a lawyer, that creates a huge extra amount of work.”
To counter this, McCaffrey is filing an unprecedented number of habeas corpus petitions, a legal practice based on centuries-old law that compels the government to justify a prisoner’s continued confinement. While many immigration cases play out in immigration law courts, many immigration attorneys have filed Habeas petitions seeking federal court review of their clients’ cases.
“The benefit of Habeas is that, in a lot of jurisdictions, courts have developed a rule where when the Habeas petition is filed, there will be a no-transfer order issued, and that’s really crucial,” McCaffrey said. “Because it’s the court allowing that person to remain here so that they can avail themselves of the right to have a decision on their Habeas case, and certainly have the transfer halted – if not stopped completely.”
According to Habeas Dockets, an organization that tracks Habeas Corpus filings nationally, attorneys have filed more than 130 Habeas Corpus cases in the First District Court of Rhode Island so far in 2026, compared to just 5 filed in all of 2024. McCaffrey expects this number to rise as transfers continue.
To address this surge locally, U.S. District Court Chief Judge John McConnell Jr. recently allowed out-of-state attorneys to represent people in Rhode Island detained by ICE. McConnell said it’s a measure meant to help the state’s federal courts overwhelmed by this wave of Habeas petitions.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance trains lawyers on how to file Habeas petitions for immigration cases, and works on national impact litigation and class actions. Trina Realmuto, the organization’s executive director, says the lawyers she works with report a huge uptick in clients being transferred.
“The M.O. of this administration [is] to make it as challenging as possible for non-citizens to be able to connect with family [and] counsel and to fight their removal proceedings,” Realmuto said.
Realmuto credits an increase in ICE transfers for why she’s seeing a major increase nationwide in signups for the training her organization provides to lawyers.
“Our membership has doubled in the last year,” Realmuto said. “Because people, attorneys, have such a need to learn how to litigate in federal court in order to represent their clients. So the uptick has been astonishing.”
Realmuto explained that prior to the second Trump administration, Habeas petitions had generally only been used by a small portion of the immigration bar. Now, detainee transfers are necessitating their constant use for a variety of reasons.
“We’re seeing Habeas petitions [used] to prevent transfer away from counsel, to prevent transfer away from a place where a person has to face the charges in criminal court,” Realmuto said. “But also, we’re seeing the Habeas petition [used] in order to act against ICE. In order to compel ICE to bring a person back to face charges in criminal court.”
‘The fear stays with you’
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said that transfer decisions are often made due to space constraints in detention centers. McCaffrey, however, said that her clients have faced adverse consequences that don’t appear to be connected to bed space.
“They make up their own rules. They make their transfer decisions, seemingly in some kind of black box,” McCaffrey said. “They carry them out, and we all deal with the aftermath. I would definitely say that cruelty is the point.”
Her client, D, still thinks about his experiences in New Hampshire and often wonders about his cellmate there.
“I think about my friend, who shared a cell with me, a lot. The truth is that he is still there. He still hasn’t been able to get out,” D said. “He was a good friend to me. He helped me a lot while I was inside.”
For D, the months following his release from detention haven’t eased the anxiety it left him with. He now tries to avoid immigration agents by rarely leaving his house in daylight, shifting his work schedule to work only in the early morning hours or late at night.
“I am in my home alone with my fear. I cannot go outside, it’s not easy,” D said. “That fear stays with you. Always.”
