Greetings. This installment of Immigration Disclosures highlights the Council’s Motion of Summary Judgement filed in a case to get immigration court policies and a blog on Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s data on immigrant detention. In addition, the documentary Borderland: The Line Within, which features footage the Council obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, will be screened in cities throughout the country next month.
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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report this past month that found Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s data comprised striking errors producing a notable undercount of people in immigration detention. The report’s new findings support the Council and partners’ preceding demands for ICE to bolster data collection for oversight over ICE’s activities. Read the Council’s blog analyzing the report here.
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Last May, the documentary Borderland: The Line Within produced by Skylight Pictures, made its debut. The documentary features footage obtained through a FOIA request with the help of the Council from a raid U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) carried out on a humanitarian aid camp set up in an Arizona desert. Skylight Pictures will be going on tour beginning next month across the country. Read here about the Council’s role in obtaining the footage and check out the cities here.
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The Council Filed a Motion in Court to Force EOIR to Conduct an Adequate Search for Records on its Practice of Moving Up Immigrants’ Hearings with Limited Notice |
On August 22, the Council filed a Motion for Summary Judgement regarding an unreasonable search the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) conducted for records about immigration courts’ practice of advancing immigrants’ individual hearings. For several years, immigration attorneys had been reporting that EOIR – a subagency of the U.S. Department of Justice whose primary function is to administer removal proceedings – had been moving up the date of immigrants’ individual hearings with little to no notice to immigrants or their attorneys. As such, in October 2022, the Council and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights (formerly CAIR Coalition) filed a FOIA request with EOIR requesting records on the agency’s notices to immigrants and lawyers about (1) EOIR’s practice of advancing individual hearings, (2) the notice immigrants and lawyers receive for the new hearing date, (3) how immigration judges decide whether to grant continuances when the reason for such extensions are attorneys’ work-related conflict or workload, and (4) data about the number of cases EOIR has advanced since 2021. The records would elucidate why the EOIR was advancing cases, which types of cases the EOIR was shifting, and whether the EOIR follows rules on how to alert immigrants and their lawyers of the rescheduling.
FOIA requires agencies like EOIR to perform a reasonable search for records responsive to a FOIA request, i.e., to search all locations likely to contain these records using a method that is likely to uncover them. EOIR’s initial search for requested records produced a single email chain “concerning language access in immigration court” and publicly available documents that did not discuss practices for advancing individual hearings. Nonetheless, EOIR insists that it performed a reasonable search.
The Council is requesting that the Court order EOIR to conduct a reasonable search for the requested records via summary judgment, deciding the case without trial, which is how most FOIA cases are resolved. In its motion (which is also a response to EOIR’s motion for summary judgment), the Council points out that EOIR misconstrued its request, did not search all repositories likely to contain the requested records, and did not use a search identified locations using method or keywords likely to find all requested records.
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Changing the date of immigration hearings can have serious consequences on immigrants facing deportation, particularly where the change occurs at the last minute and without notice. Individual hearings are the trials where immigrants fight their removal and have the opportunity to present their case before a judge. When a hearing is rescheduled with short notice, attorneys have less time to prepare, jeopardizing representation.
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Advancing hearings without any input from lawyers has overburdened attorneys with trials and scheduling conflicts.
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Studies show that EOIR’s search method in this case—a keyword search of email accounts—is only twenty percent effective. A ruling in the Council’s favor on this issue could provide precedent that other transparency attorneys may use to dispute the effectiveness of keyword searches by government agencies in the future.
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The American Immigration Council works to hold the
government accountable on immigration issues. We harness freedom of information requests, litigation, and advocacy to expose the wrongdoing and promote transparency within immigration agencies. Make a donation today.
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