WASHINGTON—The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), seeking the agencies’ emails about the decision to “rebrand” its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) component.
Since its founding in reaction to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, ICE has been, and remains, one law enforcement agency with two law enforcement components: Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) tasked with detaining and removing illegal aliens from the United States, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), responsible for enforcing a large number of federal statutes, chief among them the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
But in April, DHS and ICE leadership rolled out a “rebrand” of HSI in an attempt to abandon its statutorily assigned immigration enforcement mission. HSI managers claimed that enforcing the INA had rendered the organization “toxic” in certain cities and states, namely sanctuary jurisdictions whose policies already undermine ICE’s chief purpose of enforcing our country’s immigration laws.
The move appeared to come from Acting ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner, who worked at HSI in 2018 and signed a letter at the time calling on then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to “rebrand” HSI due to ICE’s supposed “toxicity.”
In a leaked internal email, ERO Executive Associate Director Daniel Bible aptly described the HSI rebrand as “political theater.”
In April, IRLI submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to DHS and ICE seeking internal communications relating to the rebrand. Under FOIA, federal agencies are legally required to provide public records within twenty working days of a request. However, to date DHS and ICE have still failed to furnish any responsive information, making the lawsuit necessary to compel production.
“This is typical of permanent Washington’s view of law enforcement,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “Instead of doubling down on its mission when our borders are under siege, HSI appears more concerned with the feelings of sanctuary politicians who are triggered at the mention of ICE. These politicians will not support HSI regardless of any cosmetic rebranding. The American public deserves to know how their public servants arrived at the decision to enact this superfluous move.”
According to IRLI Director of Investigations Matt O’Brien, “Congress assigns federal law enforcement agencies responsibility for enforcing specific laws. And no agency is free to unilaterally refuse to enforce laws they simply don’t like. Instead of protecting the American public, like it is supposed to, HSI has usurped Congress’ power and undermined the effectiveness of federal immigration enforcement efforts.”
The case is Federation for American Immigration Reform v. Department of Homeland Security et al., No 1:24-cv-02108 (D.D.C.).
