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While they\u2019re not<\/span> as common as reviews for cafes and dry cleaners, reviews have poured into Google Maps by the thousands for the growing network of jails operated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The reviews have come from internet users sharing their often harrowing experiences in the detention facilities<\/a>.<\/p>\n Google then purges these reviews and blocks the ability to write new ones, according to newly published research.<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle actively suppresses carceral information, narratives, and digital trace data related to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s (ICE) detention facilities,\u201d wrote Muira McCammon, a professor at Tulane University\u2019s Department of Communication who has been scraping and analyzing self-reported accounts of ICE imprisonment posted to Google Maps since last year.<\/p>\n Much of this record is now permanently deleted, erasing detailed testimony of people ingested by the U.S. deportation machine<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost all of the Google reviews\u00a0that I originally collected in 2025 are now no longer available.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Last August, McCammon aggregated 1,636 posts from 26 different ICE facilities where Google still allowed users to post reviews and discovered there were 91 other immigration jails on Google Maps with no reviews.<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle had already turned off reviews for the remaining 91 facilities,\u201d McCammon told The Intercept. \u201cAlmost all of the Google reviews\u00a0that I originally collected in 2025 are now no longer available.\u201d<\/p>\n Only four ICE facilities appear to still permit reviews on Google Maps, she said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pulling the reviews has come with no public notice or explanation.<\/p>\n In 2023, Google said in a corporate blog post<\/a> that it reserved the right to delete Maps reviews for locations that are \u201cconsistently unhelpful, harmful, or off-topic. This includes places that people go to without choice or places only accessible to people stationed or assigned there\u2014such as police stations and prisons.\u201d<\/p>\n Unhelpful to whom, however, is unclear: While some of the reviews in question were statements of protest that could have been left by anyone, many appeared to come from people directly affected by ICE. They described a variety of issues that would be of great material interest to anyone detained in the facilities or for people close to them.<\/p>\n \u201cReviews help people make decisions on where to go,\u201d Google spokesperson Genevieve Park said in a statement, \u201cand we don\u2019t show reviews on several categories of places where people go without choice,\u201d citing the company\u2019s policy of removing Google Maps reviews that are \u201cunhelpful, harmful, or off-topic.\u201d <\/p>\n In the past, Google has complied with requests to censor speech about ICE. In 2025, the company blocked Android users from downloading<\/a> ICEBlock, an app that alerted people to crowdsourced sightings of ICE agents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked if the Department of Homeland Security, ICE\u2019s parent agency, had communicated with Google about the reviews, Park said the takedowns were \u201cunrelated\u2014it was about enforcing our policy that prohibits reviews for places that people go to without choice.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement to The Intercept, a spokesperson for DHS denied that ICE requested any reviews of detention facilities be removed.<\/p>\n\n