Tag: FOIA
Many of the country’s top immigration agencies operate in secret. This lack of transparency in how immigration laws are implemented, administered, and enforced has the potential to devastate the lives of millions of immigrants and their families. Fortunately, there is a powerful tool—the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—that ensures government agencies comply with their obligations […]
A FOIA request has forced the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) to produce its comprehensive plan for reducing the immigration court backlog. Though partially redacted, the aim of the October 2017 “Strategic Caseload Reduction Plan” is clear—to fundamentally alter the immigration court system under the guise of creating efficiencies. EOIR is already implementing this […]
The government continues the appalling practice of detaining pregnant women, most of whom are seeking safety and protection in the United States. Following an official policy change by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), immigrant rights organizations filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request this week demanding the agency release critical information about its use […]
To shed light on the cruel and unlawful practice of family separation, a group of immigrant rights organizations filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to multiple government agencies this week. The groups seek agency records underlying an unconscionable practice where immigration officials at the border purposefully divide families–taking children from their parents […]
Each year on November 1 and 2, people around the world celebrate the Day of the Dead—sometimes called All Souls Day or Día de los Muertos in Spanish—to remember and honor children and adults who have died. To date, since 2003, 165 people have died in immigration detention, including ten in Fiscal Year 2016 (ending […]
More than two years after the Obama Administration launched its aggressive expansion of family detention in an attempt to “deter” the arrival of asylum-seeking Central American families, numerous problems associated with such practice have been brought to light. One such issue is the separation of family units while in U.S. custody. A report released this […]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is continuing to defend the controversial “Operation Border Guardian” program that took more than 100 Central American women and children from their homes in two days of immigration raids last January. According to a lawsuit filed this week by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the law firm […]
This summer, the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) in its lawsuit seeking the disclosure of unredacted versions of complaints filed against immigration judges. To date, the government has refused to turn over the names, locations, and genders of immigration judges against whom complaints […]
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the 1997 settlement in Flores v. Reno—which governs the detention, treatment and release of immigrant children—covers both unaccompanied and accompanied minors. This was a direct repudiation of the position the government took while defending its family detention policies in court. The government argued that the Flores […]
Two years ago, the American Immigration Council released an analysis of data it had obtained from the Department of Homeland Security detailing an utter lack of responsiveness to complaints filed against agents employed by United States Border Patrol. In fact, the report, No Action Taken: Lack of CBP Accountability in Responding to Complaints of Abuse […]
