The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is being violated by the Trump administration, according to a complaint that was filed on Friday in Washington, District of Columbia. The petition argues that the administration is unwilling to divulge documents about “politically motivated” immigration enforcement and mass deportations.
American Oversight, a nonprofit organization that focuses on transparency, has filed a complaint that is thirty pages long, accusing several departments and federal organizations of routinely breaching the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) statute on many different requests over the course of the past few months.
“The American people deserve full transparency about what’s driving this administration’s sweeping immigration raids,” stated Chioma Chukwu, the Executive Director of American Oversight, in a press release the day that the litigation was announced. “From arrests in schools and churches to raids on small businesses and farms, the administration’s immigration enforcement has disproportionately targeted our most vulnerable — including children, low-income workers, and immigrant communities.”
It is portrayed in the complaint as an immigration agenda that is disguised in the rhetoric of public safety and is utilized as a method to enforce the political objective of President Donald Trump and reward his allies.
“American Oversight brings this action in response to the Trump Administration’s mass deportation efforts, which have become increasingly aggressive, sweeping, and — by the President’s own tacit admission — politically motivated,” the lawsuit states in its entirety. To be more specific, he has instructed immigration enforcement agencies “to do everything in their power” in order to jail and deport undocumented immigrants in “America’s largest cities,” which the President has referred to as the “core of the Democrat Power Center.” He did this by bringing up unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about voting by non-citizens, which further demonstrates that these attempts are driven less by concerns about public safety and more by party goals.
The organization makes its point regarding the objectives of the government with regard to immigration enforcement by citing a long list of news stories that are relevant to immigration. The plaintiffs claim that the Trump administration telegraphed a focus on deporting criminals while simultaneously performing high-profile detentions of college students and visa holders. Subsequently, the administration shifted enforcement priorities away from the agricultural and hospitality industries and then back again, both times in response to political blowback.
The American Oversight report said that it sought “to shed light on the Administration’s shifting immigration enforcement priorities, the political considerations driving those actions, and the internal decision-making processes behind this unprecedented escalation in immigration enforcement.”
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiries that led to the lawsuit. On January 28th, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) received the initial submission.
This Freedom of Information Act request, as stated in the lawsuit, sought a series of communications to and from various Department of Homeland Security officials. These communications included references to keywords and terms such as “school,” “university,” place of worship,” “mosque,” “temple,” “synagogue,” “sensitive zone,” “protected area,” “community zone,” and a variety of other terms such as these.
A clarification was included in the FOIA request in order to assist in contextualizing the request and assisting the records custodian in limiting the amount of responses:
Records that reflect any final directives, whether written or informal (including informal email communications), guidelines, protocol, or regulations about the rescinding of the previous policy respecting sensitive sites…
Any final formal or informal directives, guidance, protocol, or regulations that have been issued to federal immigration enforcement officers regarding deportation and arrest priorities are shown in the records. This includes informal email contacts.
Records that reflect any final directives, whether they are written or informal, guidelines, protocol, or regulations governing the arrest of individuals in formerly sensitive settings such as schools, hospitals, or houses of worship. These directives may include informal email messages.
A second request was issued by American Oversight on February 21. This request sought communications to and from a second group of Department of Homeland Security officials.
During the months of January and February, the organization sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and the Department of Labor (DOL). These requests were sometimes quite similar to one another. Several of the further FOIA petitions uncovered a variety of other keyword groups. The following are some examples of other words and terms: “migrant,” “foreign national,” “round up,” “raid,” “undocumented,” “noncitizen,” “I-9,” and “e-verify.” Every single one of those demands was connected to the priorities of immigration enforcement and desired communications.
In April, the organization then made another Freedom of Information Act request to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for constitutional phrases such as “Fourth Amendment,” “search and seizure,” “warrant,” “warrantless,” and “probable cause.”
According to the lawsuit, American Oversight “has not received any further correspondence or a final determination” from any of the five agencies that are in question, despite the fact that the government has confirmed receipt of each FOIA request and provided tracking numbers in each and every instance.
American Oversight reports that both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) invoking a statutory 10-day extension of the requirements in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) statute, but they have not received any updates from either agency since then. As far as the Department of Labor is concerned, the agency stated that the request had been “classified as ‘complex’ due to ‘unusual circumstances'” and that as a result, they would not be able to answer “within the time limits established by FOIA,” as stated in the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs assert that the government violated two aspects of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the activities of the agencies and departments that were mentioned.
“Through Defendants’ failure to respond to American Oversight’s FOIA requests within the time period required by law, American Oversight has constructively exhausted its administrative remedies and seeks immediate judicial review,” the lawsuit states in its entirety.
The lawsuit is seeking a court order that will direct the defendants to carry out the searches that have been requested which are “reasonably calculated to uncover all records responsive to American Oversight’s FOIA requests” and to submit “all non-exempt” records to the group within a period of twenty days. In addition, the plaintiffs are seeking an order that will prevent any additional violations of the Freedom of Information Act. The fees of the attorneys are also being requested by them.
