Since the middle of last month, at least 84 suspected illegal immigrants have been arrested throughout Rhode Island, including two highly publicized mass arrests — one at state courthouses last week.

The arrests raise many questions.

Has the federal bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeted Rhode Island for a crackdown on illegal immigration? Exactly how many people have been arrested so far this year? Where are they being detained? And, are these stepped-up raids driven by Governor Carcieri’s executive order on illegal immigration?

Unlike other law enforcement agencies that are compelled to release such information, ICE often operates in secret, say lawyers, advocates for freedom of the press and civil libertarians.

Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Rhode Island raids represent “the same story” as ACLU has experienced in past dealings with ICE.

“Many detainees end up in an impenetrable rabbit hole from Alice in Wonderland,” said Brown. “They are often impossible to find, ICE is often unable to tell family members where they are held — and then, when you finally find them, a chess game begins, where these detainees get transferred to distant places across the country.”

ICE disagrees, insisting that it operates in the open. “Our agency is transparent,” says Paula Grenier, ICE spokeswoman at the Boston regional office. She said families and lawyers can phone to find out detainees’ whereabouts, and detainees have phone access to lawyers and family.

And, she said, ICE “is not targeting Rhode Island for a crackdown.”

“This most recent law enforcement action [at the courthouses] is part of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Grenier said. “And on June 12, we conducted targeted enforcement actions based on intelligence and leads. That operation was specifically targeting fugitive aliens. But we make arrests everywhere in the country every day.”

The recent raids and other arrests in Rhode Island underscore the differing opinions.

First came a two-day federal sweep last month through Aquidneck Island that netted 42 suspected illegal immigrants from Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico, at apartments, stores and other locations.

Then, last Tuesday, state police and ICE agents raided six Rhode Island courthouses, arresting 31 suspected illegal immigrant maintenance workers who worked for two state vendors. Those detainees, from Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, are facing administrative charges for being in the country illegally. To date, none are charged criminally.

In addition to the big raids, ICE has detained other suspected illegal immigrants during the past few weeks at traffic stops, apartments and other locations.

Lawyers scrambling to locate some of the 19 detainees held after the courthouse raids (12 people were immediately released on humanitarian grounds) reported finding six others at the Bristol County House of Corrections who said they were arrested in Providence in the past few days — but not at the courthouses. Ondine Sniffin, attorney with Catholic Social Services of Fall River, said some of the six detainees said they were arrested at traffic stops.

And four Brazilian men were taken into ICE custody and are expected to be deported following a state police traffic stop on July 9 on Route 4 in North Kingstown.

Critics last week called it “more than coincidental” that the courthouse raids occurred as a governor’s advisory panel, charged with monitoring Carcieri’s new executive order cracking down on illegal immigration, convened for the first time.

Grenier said the recent Rhode Island arrests “are not tied to any initiative by the Rhode Island state governor.”

“ICE is just enforcing the immigration and customs enforcement laws, and we’re going to enforce immigration and customs laws everywhere in the United States.”

Connected or not, the recent arrests underscore what attorneys, civil libertarians and advocates for freedom of the press call a long-standing lack of transparency on the part of ICE.

Lawyers involved in the Rhode Island cases — some of whom assisted detainees from last year’s raid at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory, in New Bedford, in which 362 workers were arrested — say ICE “plays games,” leading to what one lawyer calls “the black hole” into which detainees disappear.

After the courthouse raids last week, an ICE spokesman said the detainees were being held at various regional detention facilities, but refused to specify which ones. He called that “too sensitive a question.”

ICE also does not release names of detainees charged solely with being in the country illegally — as is the case in the courthouse detainees — citing “privacy reasons.”

Overall numbers of arrests are hard to come by as well.

Asked, for example, how many suspected illegal immigrants ICE has arrested and detained since January in Rhode Island, Grenier said, “We don’t capture statistics that way.” She said ICE records those numbers regionally, and by fiscal year.

Lucy Dagleish, executive director of the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press, calls ICE “a particularly troublesome agency.”

“Because they are dealing frequently with illegal immigrants, the government takes the position that the normal rules of government transparency do not apply. They think they can lock them up in secret; not let you know who they’ve got or where they are, or what they did with them, and either keep them jailed or kick them out of the country,” Dagleish said.

“And we as citizens have no way of engaging in oversight of that agency. It is just about the single biggest exception out there to the American notion of justice.”

Dagleish said, “We first discovered how nasty this is going to get right after 9/11, when the feds rounded up 1,200 foreign nationals across the country. Most were Muslim men.”

She said the Reporters’ Committee struck out when it tried to access those names either through freedom of information requests, or through traditional access, by sitting in on court hearings.

“So essentially if you are here illegally, the federal government can swoop you up and take you right off the street and do God knows what to you and the public is never going to know because they don’t have to tell us.”

Grenier disagrees.

“We work with attorneys all the time and those attorneys are provided with information on their client. Families who are searching for their loved ones can call our office of Detention and Removal,” through a toll-free number that can identify the facility in which a detainee is being held. Attorneys may also access clients’ whereabouts through that line, she said.

Grenier said detainees receive handbooks explaining their rights, from telephone privileges, case information, to vending machine locations. She said ICE officers address all matters of concern, and interpreters are available.

Grenier said detainees are allowed free phone calls to any of a list of pro-bono lawyers ICE provides. They are allowed to make outside calls to relatives or friends, but whether those are free depends on the facility, she said.

Grenier also said the ICE Web site — www.ice.gov — provides public information. “We do provide information to those who request it — to the media, attorneys, and other interested stakeholders,” she said.

Alison Foley, a Providence attorney who is among the volunteer lawyers in the courthouse cases, said Friday, “Of the 19 detainees, a group of lawyers have made contact with nine. Four were in the Wyatt Detention Facility [in Central Falls] and five were in the Essex County House of Corrections” in Massachusetts. Of the others, said Foley, “Our understanding was that they were sent to Bristol County [House of Corrections] but we haven’t been able to confirm that any of them are at Bristol County.”

She added, “A lot of the information we have gotten from ICE has been wrong. The number of arrests, for instance. … They told us 31 detained, but we found several more — at least four or five” who had been arrested as part of the courthouse sweeps.

Foley said that information stems from interviews with Wyatt detainees, detainees’ relatives, and coworkers who witnessed some arrests.

Asked on Friday about this disparity, Grenier double-checked with ICE officials, who reiterated that 31 workers had been arrested.

“It has been our experience through our dealings with ICE that they are not generally honest or forthcoming with information, so it wasn’t shocking to us,” said Foley. “They are not at all transparent. We haven’t been able to get straightforward information at all from them.”

The ACLU’s Steven Brown said, “It’s really a terrible situation and inexcusable. It imposes a tremendous burden on family members— obviously it’s difficult for detainees to get legal help for any legal charges against them. It’s terrible, but it routinely happens this way.”

With reports from staff writers Tom Mooney and Jennifer Jordan.

kziner@projo.com