ICE says funding showdown is stalling it from giving NC group public records
A public records fight between immigrant advocates and the federal government turned testy this week.
Facing allegations that it withheld documents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement pointed to Congress’s deadlock on Department of Homeland Security funding, and on March 16 asked a judge to pause the case for the time being.
That drew indignation from Carolina Migrant Network and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. The groups sued ICE earlier this year and alleged that the federal agency failed to hand over a memorandum explaining its policy on ankle and wrist monitors. ICE is under DHS.
ICE has “a pattern or practice of failing to conduct an adequate search for responsive records to FOIA requests within FOIA’s timing requirements,” the Jan. 14 complaint filed in North Carolina’s western district said.
As Congress debates whether to give DHS more funding, ICE’s public records office is on furlough, the government said in a Monday filing. ICE planned to turn over the records before those furloughs, the government said.
The funding showdown began after some Democrats said they wanted major reforms at DHS. That came after controversial arrests over the last year, including in Charlotte.
ICE has still produced other public records “for the last several weeks,” since Republicans and Democrats arrived at their impasse, a response from Carolina Migrant Network and the Amica Center noted.
But the principle of ICE’s request drew more ire.
“Defendant’s decision to shutter its FOIA office is quite gob-smacking given that it was recently the beneficiary of $85 billion” under Republicans’ sweeping legislative package that passed last year, the attorneys for the groups wrote, “making it the best-funded law enforcement agency in the country (and, presumably, in history).”
If a judge allows ICE to furlough its public records office and not produce the records for even longer, that will only reward “bad faith” behavior, the filing said.
The government disputed that ICE acted in bad faith and said there might be other explanations for some records being produced recently.
Ryan Oehrli covers criminal justice in the Charlotte region for The Charlotte Observer. His work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.