Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is
notorious for committing rampant unconstitutional and inhumane abuses in its
detention system — something advocates, communities, and watchdog investigations have condemned for
years. Public oversight of ICE detention is about to become even harder,
further eroding accountability and endangering the health and safety of more than
50,000 people in ICE custody every day. That’s because the National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA) recently gave a green light to ICE to destroy numerous
types of records — including detention and civil rights complaint records from
the first year of the Trump administration.
Today, the ACLU is filing a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain records at serious risk of destruction
so that they may be preserved on behalf of the public. The American
Immigration Council, National Immigrant Justice Center, and the National Immigration
Law Center
are filing nearly identical FOIA requests as well. Our shared purpose reflects
a pillar of government accountability: Government agencies should not be
allowed to destroy the paper trail of their incompetence and wrongdoing.
Specifically, we are seeking detention-related
records from ICE that are scheduled to be deleted after short retention periods
of only three to seven years. These records cover a wide range of ICE
operations and activities, including ICE’s own on-site monitoring of detention
facilities, the placement of detainees in solitary confinement, and complaints
reported to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties. Alarmingly, the weekly monitoring reports of detention
facilities — the same places infamous for their dehumanizing, grossly
inadequate, and dangerous conditions — could already be on the chopping block
if they date to the earliest days of the Trump administration’s brutal
anti-immigrant agenda.
Given their important role documenting
decisions by government officials and offering proof of the harm that people
suffer in detention, the destruction of these records in such a short period of
time will further obscure important evidence. Three years is even shorter than
the statute of limitations for some legal claims available to victims of abuse
in detention, as well as the full duration of many FOIA claims. Destroying
relevant ICE records on such short timetables could foreclose the chance of
pursuing justice and accountability.
This development could not come at a worse time. Last December, ICE announced new facility standards that lower oversight requirements and weaken what paltry protections exist for people held in detention. Long before that announcement, ICE was already well known for conditions so atrocious they sparked hunger strikes among asylum seekers, instances of sexual assault committed by ICE facility employees, and substandard medical care so bad that it killed people. Even the DHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office, whose own records are among those at risk of deletion, admitted that ICE has “systematically provided inadequate medical and mental health care and oversight to immigration detainees in facilities throughout the U.S.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office
of Inspector General has also admitted that ICE’s own oversight system has failed to “ensure adequate oversight or
systemic improvements in detention conditions, with some deficiencies remaining
unaddressed for years.” As we warned several years ago, when ICE’s initial
plans for the destruction of detention records first came to light, allowing
ICE to operate with even less scrutiny will result in worse detention
conditions, more violations of people’s constitutional rights, and more people
subjected to life-threatening circumstances.
The ICE detention system needs further
transparency, not even more cover as it commits human rights violations with
impunity. Our FOIA request is intended to ensure that records critical to this
oversight and accountability do not disappear at ICE’s convenience. But
ultimately, we hope that Congress is watching — because it will take lawmakers’
intervention to fully protect ICE detention records in a systematic, lasting
manner from an agency bent on brutalizing people in its custody and then
getting away with it.