When immigration agents detain a child, the child’s family and lawyer should be able to find them. Right now, that isn’t always happening. Federal court filings describe families locked in hotel rooms for days while their attorneys searched for them. Some children have been kept in hotels without their parents at all.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained more than 8,750 children since President Trump returned to office, according to data reported by The Marshall Project. Court filings show 86 children were kept in hotels longer than three days during February and March.

One mother from Long Island, New York, says she and her two kids were detained at a routine ICE check-in and flown to a hotel in Texas. She says guards stayed inside the room day and night for nine days and warned her that her children could be taken from her if she revealed their location. Her lawyer later told the court he couldn’t find the family in ICE’s online detainee locator.

Michelle Brané, who leads the immigrant family advocacy group Together and Free, described an 11-year-old boy held in a hotel room for five days, apart from his father, who was sent to an adult detention camp.

In April, a federal judge once again ordered ICE to stop holding children in hotels, except for short stays of one or two nights during travel. Government officials have said in court that some hotel stays happened because of flight delays or missing travel documents.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE can fix this. Every detained child should appear in ICE’s public detainee locator within 24 hours, so families and lawyers always know where they are. And no child should be held in a hotel room apart from their parents.

Sign the petition to tell DHS and ICE that no child should vanish into a hotel room. Make every detained child findable and keep families together.