Over the last year, Google has quietly disabled user reviews for most of the country's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, a widespread policy shift documented by a recent academic study that raises questions about corporate transparency and public accountability for places of involuntary confinement.

This move, which has effectively removed a key public forum for individuals to report conditions within these centers, comes to light through research published in New Media & Society, highlighting a growing concern among advocates who argue vital oversight is being curtailed for facilities where individuals are held without choice.

On a sweltering July day when temperatures soared past 100 degrees, Tania Choto's husband, Fernando, endured extreme heat conditions at ICE's Farmville Detention Center in Virginia. The air conditioning had failed, and Fernando, held within the facility, described fending off heat exhaustion. Desperate, Choto called the facility's main line, and after navigating language options, was met with an annoyed sigh from an operator who confirmed, "Yes, there's no air conditioning," before hanging up. Not knowing where else to turn, Choto attempted to leave a one-star Google review for Farmville, describing her husband's distress.

Choto was unaware that opportunities to review ICE detention facilities on Google are now scarce. A recent study by Muira McCammon, an Assistant Professor at Tulane University, published in the June 2026 issue of New Media & Society, reveals that over the past year, Google has systematically disabled reviews for nearly all of the more than 100 ICE detention facilities across the country. McCammon's research, part of a "sociotechnical audit," found that by mid-2026, only four facilities retained active review sections, a significant drop from 26 in August 2025. The research specifically notes that Farmville, still reviewable, was incongruously misclassified by Google as a public bathroom.

Google, headquartered in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, states that its policy since 2023 has been to disallow reviews for "places that people go to without choice," including prisons, police stations, and detention centers. However, this policy has been applied inconsistently. For instance, the San Francisco ICE field office at 630 Sansome Street once had two Google listings: one categorized as a prison (reviews disabled), and another as a federal office where a one-star review describing it as a detainment site remained active until Google eventually labeled it an "error." This inconsistency leads McCammon to pose a critical question: "One of the core questions that I have is to what extent is Google making these decisions on its own as a content moderation policy versus to what extent is Google acting on behalf of political appointees and other stakeholders within ICE?"

The disabling of these reviews, McCammon argues, removes a vital public forum. "I would like to make sure that there are civic forums that are available to people, not just within the United States, but globally, to discuss their interactions and their beliefs, about these federal institutions," she stated. For individuals like Tania Choto, who said of the review removal, "That affects our freedom of expression, right?", these platforms represent one of the few avenues to voice concerns about the conditions within facilities where people are held indefinitely.