ICE Releases Hundreds of its Detention Subfield Office Addresses and Phone Numbers, Following Court Order

 ICE, We Know Where to Find You! 
Release from Deportation Research Clinic, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University

 Chicago Sample List from 1,250 Rows of ICE Subfield Offices Nationwide  
For entire spreadsheet, click here

 

Chicago Sample List of ICE Addresses and Phone Numbers 

click to enlarge, or download spreadsheet

Backstory
In 2009, I encountered an ICE report indicating that ICE had 186 "subfield offices," meaning locations with holding cells designed for 24 hours or less.  I filed a request of ICE requesting a list of their locations.  
 

When I received the list, I was stunned to learn that one of the locations was in the Chelsea Market, a couple blocks from my apartment.  The Chelsea Market is a tourist scene, not to mention home to the Food Network and other glam enterprises.  You can read about my conversation with the guy running the U.S. Marshal operation and coordinating on the third floor with ICE's Fugitive Operations in The Nation, "America's Secret ICE Castles."  The guy in charge  did not appreciate my pointing out that he was using Rachel Ray as a human shield and asked me not to reveal their operations, a request I turned down.  Here's a link to the list and story from 2009.  

About ten years later, I was looking at a release of similar list posted on the National Immigrant Justice Center.  Except it was too short and no addresses or phone numbers were included.

ICE's response to my request for the data for the missing fields was an unreadable PDF.  After years of litigation, and a court order from Illinois Northern District Court Judge Mary Rowland, ICE coughed up this list.  The contact information and specification of responsibilities should be helpful to those trying to assist folks ICE is arresting.

 

Many thanks to my FOIA attorney Nicolette Glazer.  The Deportation Research Clinic operates on a miniscule budget and the work of intrepid undergraduate research assistants, who draft our complaints and analyze productions.  Thanks to Gabriel Sanchez, Class of 2026, who worked on this litigation and many other cases.  
Please consider  supporting our work.      

 

Update, March 13, 2026 - The spreadsheet does not include the 88 Tenth Ave., NYC (Chelsea Market) location where ICE previously operated.  Turns out that the U.S. Marshals et al. relocated a few years ago to Brooklyn.  The new address and phone numbers are listed in the recently released spreadsheet as "NYC ECP" (Enforcement Criminal Prosecutions).   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 26, 2025 Expedited Removal Order to Deport California-born U.S. Citizen, Citing Removal Order Immigration Judge ... Terminated in 2004

ICE Really is Out to Get Miguel Silvestre, a U.S. Citizen  

Miguel reached out to me a couple years ago because he couldn't shake the fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might try to mess up his life, again.  Miguel was born in Stockton, California and has a contemporaneous birth certficate.   I pursued records requests so he could obtain the bogus records driving his original deportation as well as the records on its termination in 2004, so that having them might give Miguel some documentation, prevent this from happening again, and give him some peace of mind.  (You can read about his ordeal here.)

Beseiged since early 2025 by reporters who wanted to know how a U.S. citizen could be deported, I posted a few months ago a detailed narrative of Miguel's experiences.  Even though they went back to 1999, 2002, and 2004, the screen shots document how immigration agents then and today work with local law enforcement to deport, or in Miguel's case, simply kidnap, a U.S. citizen.

On July 4, 2025 Miguel had a day off work and called me back. I was so relieved to hear from him.  I wasn't able to reach him earlier in the week and worried he was already picked up. Still, I felt awful about the alarming news I had to break to him.  

A Customs and Border Patrol release of his records to me last week, one I thought would include historical materials, revealed ICE had written up a new arrest warrant and on June 26, 2025 issued a fresh expedited removal order, meaning that any encounter with any law enforcement entity could mean Miguel goes straight to Mexico, without an immigration hearing.  

Click to Enlarge

 

 

 

Miguel's been working on a construction site a three hour drive from home, waking up at 3:30 in the morning and returning home at 7:30 p.m.  He's still traumatized from the kidnapping experiences 20 years ago and newly worried about a fender bender he caused from his exhaustion, one that involved the exchange of insurance information but not a police report.  We discussed what he could do to prevent another nightmare.  "I carry that 2004 order in my backpack everywhere I go," he told me.  

How is this even possible?  Miguel should be the last person in this country who should be flagged for immediate removal.  I should be more worried about deportation than Miguel.  That's because only Miguel has an order from an immigration judge terminating his deportation and stating Miguel is a U.S. citizen, based on his mother bringing down to Florence, Arizona, a copy of Miguel's birth certificate. 

 

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Miguel is not the only one who should be alarmed.  The U.S. Supreme Court needs to revisit the precedents derived from vague treatises on national sovereignty, on which the Chinese Exclusion Act precedents overturning the Constitution's due process rights were based. Miguel's plight further highlights the toxicity of the "nation" and its "national security" myths on which these cases relied. It's time to use originalism to overturn vague claims that are not grounded in the text of the Constitution.    

On the occasion of our celebration of independence from England, We the People should be able to celebrate our independence of pernicious myths of the U.S. as a nation.  (A chapter reviewing this jurisprudence will appear in a forthcoming collection of essays edited by Nicholas De Genova and Daniel Morales, Border Abolitionism: Migrant Struggles and the Law, Duke University Press.)

Butler County Jail and ICE Violate Labor and Immigration Laws, Line Official Claims Coffee Packets for Work are "Monetary"

 

 

In 2019 I published records on the work program for those in custody under immigration laws at the Butler County, Ohio jail, as well as my interview with the warden.  The gist is that the program was paying people for work with coffee packets.  The sherriff expressed his view that it was fine for him to employ the same protocols for people in custody under criminal laws for people in ICE custody. 

In reporting on this, I contacted ICE's public relations office.  When they failed to answer my questions about the discrepancies between the programs and the law, I filed an additional FOIA request.

Five years after failing to provide responsive records and four years into litigation, ICE yesterday released some damning emails - 169 pp.).  

6:04 p.m.  

The highlights: ICE confirms the Butler County program was not in compliance; the inspection group erroneously claimed the jail did not have a work program and omitted any evaluation of the unlawful practices; and other jails also were and likely are still out of compliance.

6:12 p.m. (DSM = Detention Service Manager, supposed to monitor compliance)

I'll fill in the details later but wanted to make this available asap.  It is further evidence that the compliance reports are garbage and that ICE knows this.  The good news is that ICE did finally release information underscoring the agency's disrespect for the rule of law.  The bad news is that sitting on it so long -- part of a pattern and practice of violating the FOIA -- deprives the public of real-time accountability, though it may still be quite useful for suing Butler and other jails that violated their contracts and the law.

It also raises more questions about what is going with the DOJ's amicus brief supporting the work program protocols ICE officials internally affirmed to be unlawful.  

Judge Orders Executive Office of Immigration Review to Produce Screenshots and other Requested Records, Fails to Find Fault When Agencies Blow Off Deadlines

Sharing the latest motions and order from FOIA litigation. Main takeaways from Northern Illinois Federal District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly's order of October 2, 2023: 

(1) Agencies cannot refuse to search records systems indicated by a requester without demonstrating the search is burdensome:

Federal agencies vary greatly in their size, mission, the type and amount of information they collect and generate, and their record-keeping practices. A request may be unreasonably burdensome for one agency but easy to satisfy for another. Stevens has argued that EOIR's limited role, combined with the manner in which it organizes its records, means that it could "easily" conduct a search of its "emails, case notes, scheduling, and case administration system . . . by the A- number and/or the name of the non-citizen." Pl.'s Resp. at 8. EOIR, on the other hand, has not argued or provided evidence that it could not do so. The Court therefore finds that EOIR did not make "a good faith effort" that was "reasonable in light of the request" when it searched for only the record of proceedings in response to the Silvestre, Archie, Hoang, and Charpentier requests. Rubman, 800 F.3d at 387. The Court orders EOIR to promptly conduct a good-faith and reasonable search for all remaining records specifically identified in the June 2021 Silvestre request, the August 2021 Archie request, the March 2022 Hoang request, and the August 2022 Charpentier request. 1:22-cv-05072 Document 53, 10/02/2, p. 11.

This order is basically just telling the Executive Office of Immigration Review to do its job.  EOIR for years has produced screenshots, calendars, and outputs from case management systems indicating adjournments without a need for a court order.  Whoever is handling EOIR's FOIA office for these requests decided to make life difficult for the folks who need these records, including a guy born in California and deported to Mexico, as well as the AUSA handling their case, the judge, my attorney Nicolette Glazer, and me.  Whoever is behind this waste of time deserves a performance review noting their stunning waste of agency resources.

(2)   Summary judgement granted - Customs and Border Protection must immediately produce records responsive to my request for information about insurance executive and fake nurse Rep. Lauren Underwood's (D-IL) biometric database bill written at the behest of a federal contractor, seemingly General Dynamics. (Click on Lauren Underwood tag below for more on her role in depriving Cook County's poorest residents the health care she hypocritically claims that she supports.)

(3)  Agencies disregarding FOIA deadlines will not receive adverse orders via summary judgment, according to Judge Kennelly. (A bunch of us in the transparency community find the precedents cited here bad law.)

Will update next week with motions.

Court Grants Order in FOIA case for Preliminary Injunctive Relief, Annual Budget Analysis Key to Ruling

      On March 30, 2023, Northern Illinois Federal District Court Judge Matthew Kennelly issued a preliminary injunction ordering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to review at least 1,500 pages/month.  A key rationale for the order was the failure of ICE to account for its refusal to request funds sufficient to maintain its statutory obligations to comply with the Freedom of Information Act:

Although ICE argues that it has received a "dramatic increase in FOIA requests in recent years" and thus "cannot practicably process records any faster," Def.'s Suppl.Mem. at 2, ICE does not respond to Stevens's contention that ICE could have met its FOIA obligations by submitting appropriate budget requests. And it is hard to swallow the proposition that an agency may, by its decisions on how to allocate resources, effectively make FOIA’s expedited processing provision a dead letter. ICE accordingly fails to persuade the Court that granting a preliminary injunction in this case will harm the public interest. See Open Soc'y Just. Initiative, 399 F. Supp. 3d at 168–69 ("DOD's decision to thus far deny itself the technologic capacity to speed its review cannot dictate the Court's assessment of the review pace that is 'practicable' under FOIA.").
Similarly unpersuasive is ICE's vague assertion that any processing rate faster than 500 pages per month risks disclosure of exempted documents. See Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr., 416 F. Supp. 2d at 42 ("Vague suggestions that inadvertent release of exempted documents might occur are insufficient to outweigh the very tangible benefits that FOIA
seeks to further—government openness and accountability."). 22-cv-05072 ECF 34, March 30, 2023

 

 

The Order is referencing Plaintiff documention of ICE officials time and time again telling Courts, "sorry, we don't have enough resources to follow the law," but telling Congress "we're good." 

 

Most agencies have a similar track record: telling courts they do not have resources to fund their FOIA operations, while not requesting more funds from Congress. The data on which we relied can be found and used for an identical argument for most agencies. 

Plaintiff documentation of ICE's lapses can be found he    re, including the sources.  (Thanks as ever to my fabulous attorney Nicolette Glazer.)

Postscript - April 5, 2024.  Order is for ICE to review 1,500 pages/month.  After the order, ICE released ZERO pages for several consecutive months, claiming it was reviewing 1,500 pages (without indicating what these were) and finding zero responsive pages.  Attorney did not litigate to push back on ICE assertions.  Case still in litigation. 

ICE, Increase the Real Intelligence Budget!

 

"Planned Activities: Respond to all media, NGO, educational, commercial and individual FOIA requests within the statutory time limits..." From fy 2016 ICE budget

"Don't ask and ye shall not receive."
- FOIA budgeting muse

I was talking with some colleagues today about the well-known problem of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and other agencies telling requesters and courts that they cannot comply with mandatory Freedom of Information Act  deadlines because of equipment and staffing shortages.  And then the same agency tells Congress in their budget proposals, "Hey, nothing to look at here.  We've got our FOIA operations covered."  

Usually agencies ask Congress for more funds for their programs. What's up with this?  

Of course, ICE's daily mode of breaking the law benefits not one whit from misconduct being revealed.  If ICE had its druthers, I'm guessing it would request $100 billion to run drones to sweep up data on every person on the planet, and its FOIA budget would be "0." 

Congress passed the FOIA in order to deputize citizens to expose agency activities to sunlight necessary for oversight and policy changes.  There have been numerous episodes in which Congressional letters to agencies have gone unanswered but nonprofits and citizens have ferretted out the requested information through their FOIA litigation, especially during the Trump administration.  

The problem with the FOIA budgeting goes to the overarching need for the FOIA in the first place: agency officials make bad decisions, sometimes even ones that are illegal, and they want to keep these secret.

Why would Congress or anyone else think that the very agencies whose top officials are breaking the law would be requesting funding to support a program that effectively reveals their waste, fraud, and unlawful violence?  

A few FOIA lawsuits have been calling out ICE and US Citizenship and Immigration Services on this point. (TRAC's Sue Long at Syracuse University has been a tireless and productive trailblazer.  You can find their cases here and other cases on the incredible FOIA Project case locator.)

A few docs illustrating ICE's budget game can be found in the record of Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al. 1:18-cv-00302-JLK.  

Here are filings about the budget and ICE's misrepresentations:
Declaration of Catrina Pavlik-Keenan (2018) - She says she has been the director of the ICE FOIA office "since that office was created on December 18, 2006" (1).  (Fwiw, ICE was founded in 2003.) Anyway, she says ICE cannot process the documents as mandated by the law because it lacks the resources.  

Plaintiff Response (2018) - The plaintiffs pull a screenshot from the fy2018 budget and note, correctly, that "the current level of FOIA requests being received by ICE was both predictable and in fact anticipated. Yet the 2018 Budget request makes no mention of any funds needed or requested to address the anticipated increase in the number of FOIA requests" (4).

Plaintiff Motion for Sanctions (2019)  

The fy2018 budget on which CREEC relies does not specify funds expended.  

But other ICE budgets do give us a peek at what's going on.  (DHS budget page, through fy2022.)   

The fy2019 budget has information tied to new House accounting requirements that are requiring ICE to break out expenditures it otherwise does not report in its budget request to Congress.  It looks like of the $6.7 billion Congress appropriated for ICE in 2017, ICE spent just $6.45 million on FOIA operations.  (I agree.  That seems SO low; if anyone has another way of reading page 24 of the pdf, let me know.  The page is reporting figures for programs that going forward will be relabelled, to help budget wonks figure out what's happening when the columns move.)   

 

Otherwise, the FOIA operations are not broken out from the overall "mission support" category, which includes as well fire arm training.

Submitted for

fy 2022 - asks for four more employees/ $782k more for its ongoing FOIA/Privacy Act work.  Does not state amount spent in 2021. (p. 39,pdf).  On the next page, ICE tells Congress to budget $123k less than the previous year, due to one-time ("non-recurring") savings.

fy2021 - The document indicates that in fy2019 mission support included 2,210 total employee and spent  $1,091,898, and that in fy 2020, mission support included  2,210 employees and sent $2,092 $1,271,110.

fy 2020 - "Select Mission Support staff will be dedicated to resolving 86,320 FOIA in FY 2020, a 37% increase from FY 2018" (p. 49 pdf).

fy 2019-  This is the proposed budget that shows enacted budget of $6.45 million for iCE in 2017 (p. 24) and proposed increases to $9.627 million for 2018 and 2019.

fy 2018 -  " As depicted in the graph below,the number of FOIA requests fulfilled in FY 2018 is expected to triple from FY 2014 levels. Higher productivity is attributed to a growing workforce and implementation of new software" (p. 62, pdf).

fy 2017 - pt ii, p. 10. For the section including FOIA officers there are many other requests for increases, but no request to increase funding for FOIA requests: 

An increase of $16.1 million and 4 full-time equivalents (FTE) for the Headquarters (HQ) Managed IT Program to support  critical and long overdue improvements in Identity, Credentials, and Access Management (ICAM), cloud support, and system bandwidth. Funding will support an additional eight personnel (4 FTE) to ensure 24/7/365 availability and to meet
the cybersecurity needs of ICE IT systems, infrastructure, and services. p.10 pdf

fy 2016 - p.1435 Program Change Requests

"Changes ICE requests program changes for the Salaries and Expenses appropriation in the following key areas:
• Increase in new attorney positions…………………………...….….$36.5M (197 FTE)
The request will provide funds for 82 attorney positions requested in the October 2014 Technical Assistance and 282 new attorney positions. OPLA requires additional attorney resources to meet its increasing workload driven by recent increases in the number of Department of Justice (DOJ) immigration judges (IJs) and ongoing southwest border surge operations as well as additional requirements anticipated as a result of an increase in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and appeals. These additional positions are expected to decrease the average length of stay of detainees by 14 percent.
• Increase in Detention Beds to 34,040 [😕] …….…..………………....$435.392M (0 FTE) To meet operational needs to detain and remove both criminal aliens and recent border entrants, ICE requests an increase in the overall funding for beds to meet operational needs. The proposed increase will fund 31,280 adult beds at an average rate of $123.54 and 2,760 family beds at an average rate of $342.73 from ICE’s discretionary appropriation and fees." 

p. 1438 - "Increase of $482 thousand for annualization of the FY 2015 FOIA enhancement.' 

p. 1441

FY 2016 Planned Activities - "In FY 2016, ICE will"
 ....

One more broken promise...

 ICE did ask for 6 more FOIA employees. Not clear what happened (p. 1583)

 

FOIA Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings

Novel Attempt to Avoid Government Dithering

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A release from ICE that revealed a heretofore secret policy position on its work program took SIX YEARS of FOIA litigation to obtain. So much for the 20 days in the statute.  

In an effort to speed along litigation, attorney Andrew Free is trying out a Motion on the Pleadings. Here's what the litigation looks like to date:

Doc 7 - PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS 5/21/2020 

Doc 7-1 - PLAINTIFF’S MEMORANDUM OF POINTS AND AUTHORITIES IN SUPPORT OF JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS 5/21/2020

Doc 12 - DEFENDANT’S OPPOSITION TO PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS 6/18/2020 

Doc 13 - PLAINTIFF’S REPLY IN SUPPORT OF JUDGMENT ON THE PLEADINGS 6/23/2020

ICE Officials Knew Dollar/Day Wages Lacked Congressional Authorization

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  E-mail ICE Fought to Keep Secret for Six Years May Clinch Minimum Wage Claims against Private Prisons

For the last ten years I've been conducting research on the history and legality of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its contractors paying $1/day to those in civil custody for work vital to the operation of the detention facilities. 

I've reported on the program's effects on U.S. citizens such as Mark Lyttle and others in ICE custody, the extent of the payments and their contributions to GEO and CCA (now CoreCivic) profits, the first lawsuit filed in Denver, the class certifications, and the positive treatment of these and subsequent cases by judges and appellate courts across the country.  (See other links at end.)

Today, almost six years after FOIA litigation to obtain e-mail behind the program, and following an order by Judge Harry Leinenweber telling ICE its "messaging communications" must be produced,  we now may have a proverbial smoking gun: 2014 e-mail from ICE's Director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning (ODDP) challenging ICE's reliance on the 1979 appropriations bill for justification of the work program's $1/day wages, first disregarded and then, according to subsequent e-mail in this release, adopted as the agency's interpretation of appropriations policy for the ICE work program.

On May 1, 2014, ICE Director of ODDP Kevin Landy writes:

As indicated yesterday, I question the accuracy of this statement:
[']Facilities are reimbursed a minimum of $1 per day by ICE per Congressional appropriations standards.[']   Has someone concluded that the 1979 appropriations provision remains binding on ICE in perpetuity?  I don't think that's typically true for language inserted in appropriations bills. 

The subject heading is "NYT materials," presumably prompted by Ian Urbina, who was researching this article published on May 25.  Landy sent it to Barbara Gonzalez in the ICE public affairs office, as well as to other high-ranking officials, including Tae Johnson, then Assistant Director for Custody Management, Enforcement and Removal.  

On May 2, Ian Urbina received a statement claiming the Congressional appropriations standards justifying the work program identical to that proposed on May 1, suggesting ICE's colleagues rejected Landy's analysis.  The paragraph Landy challenged (and Urbina received) states:

Facilities that house the overwhelming majority of ICE detainees provide compensation for participation in voluntary work programs.  Facilities are reimbursed a minimum of $1 per day by ICE per Congressional appropriation standards. As of April 2014, the majority of those participating in some sort of voluntary work program -- well over 95% -- were provided monetary compensation.

Urbina's article was published on May 24.  

On May 27 at 3:34 p.m. Gonzalez proposed a response to questions from Telemundo, Univision, and Entravision triggered by Urbina's article.  The new statement, cleared by DHS, no longer included any reference to the Congressional appropriations authorization for the program.
 
At 10:39 p.m. that same day, in case one was not clear about the new version's rationale, Gonzalez sent an e-mail stating, "Sir, Per ERO, we struck this part of the background section: 'per Congressional approprations standards." (Emphasis added.)

Crucially, among the recipients was Thomas Homan, who became the acting director of ICE under Trump.  Homan's correspondence with GEO shows him rebuffing GEO's efforts for ICE to cover GEO's legal fees for the class action litigation over the firm's minimum wage and other labor violations, another indication Homan and his colleagues were fully aware that DHS and ICE did not find the 1978 appropriations bill for 1979 appropriations authorized the dollar/day payments for the ICE work program.
 
(ICE redacted the May 2 paragraph on the Congressional appropriations act in its release to me on Friday.  Fortunately, I have a previous FOIA production including the correspondence to Urbina from a prior FOIA request and this paragraph is not redacted; if I did not have this other release, the recent redaction would have made it impossible to document the change between the ICE statement of May 2 that included the 1979 appropriations rationale and the May 27 e-mail revoking this interpretation.)

In short, the release on Friday tells us that in addition to three federal judges, ICE itself since 2014 has rejected the claim by GEO and misleading statements by its own officials about the program's legal authorization in the appropriations act of 1978.  
 
Recently, the State Department's annual Trafficking In Persons report has made note of the litigation (p. 529).  Details on the legislative history of the program and its violations of the FLSA are available here; episodic scholarly publications, reports, and media coverage of the litigation are available via the Deportation Research Clinic, Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Northwestern University.  

Thanks to Nicolette Glazer for her fabulous work in drafting motions to obtain the order for these materials to be re-reviewed and unredacted.  And thanks to Andrew Free for assistance in the initial FOIA litigation and brilliant work on the actual class lawsuits now underway.

Finally, none of this would have been possible without research assistance from Matthew Casler, Daisy Conant, Grant Li, Khadeejah Milhan, Caleb Young, and numerous other students who diligently tracked the redactions for us to challenge. Thanks also to the Buffett Institute, Posner Fellow Program, and Political Science department at Northwestern University for their support. 

Stay tuned for more analysis -- trying to upload entire file but server glitch.
6/22 update  -  93 page release now available here. 
Menocal brief from 6/30/2020 referencing new release here.

Updates on ICE Work Program Violations - FOIA Litigation b(5), b(6), b(7) Order and GEO-Karnes TRO Motion

In an order issued on April 8, 2020, Judge Harry Leinenweber (Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division) ruled that the b(5) predecisional exemption is for policy decisions, not "how to spin its prior decisions":

...ICE’s internal communications about its responses to outside inquiries from the press, Congress, advocacy groups, and the public are not protected by the deliberative process privilege. From the Vaughn index descriptions and a review of the reprocessed supplemental production, ICE merely deliberates over which agency subpart should handle an inquiry and/or how to spin its prior decisions about the detainee volunteer work program and general operation of ICE detention centers. Those communications do not qualify as facilitating/informing a final agency decision or performing a deliberative function specifically assigned to ICE.... 

ICE must show that the messaging communications are so “intimately bound up with [the] agency’s central policy mission” to warrant protection. New York, 2018 WL 4853891, at *2. ICE does not make that showing here.... 

ICE’s Vaughn index descriptions and accompanying declarations do not demonstrate that these communications relate to anything other than rationalizing the agency’s final decisions. Thus, disclosure would not reveal the deliberative process behind not-yet-finalized policy decisions. Some of the redacted portions also appear to be pure facts and data that ICE solicited from its private jail operators. This kind of information is not protected by the deliberative process privilege. Nat’l Immigrant Justice Ctr. v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, No. 12-CV-04691, 2018 WL 1508531, at *5 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 27, 2018) (citing Enviro Tech, 371 F.3d at 374) (noting the deliberative process privilege “typically does
not justify the withholding of purely factual material”).
(Case 1:14-cv-03305 Document 144, Filed: 04/08/20 Pages 17, 18, 19.)

The judge also rejected ICE's b(6) and b(7) arguments and ordered the agency to unredact the names of ICE officials who participated in these deliberations:

 ICE itself distinguishes between “personnel record files” and the emails at issue here. (Def.’s Reply at 8.) Yet, ICE argues that the names it redacted are protected because they belong to lower level employees. ICE labels these employees as “support staff.” (Id.) Generally, support staff provide administrative assistance to agency managers and would not have job titles like “Deputy Chief,” “Chief of Staff,” “Deputy Field Office Director,”or “Senior Advisor.” (Reprocessed Prod. at Supp. 105, 109, 138, & 299, Fuentes Decl., Ex. D, Dkt. No. 132-1.) Such titles indicate some level of managerial authority. Even if such employees were support staff, ICE overstates the authority supporting these redactions and fails to cite any case binding on this Court or directly relevant to these circumstances. See, e.g., Skinner v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 744 F. Supp. 2d 185 (D.D.C. 2010) (upholding redaction of law enforcement and support staff names, among others, from documents related to specific investigations under Exemption 7(C)); Associated Press v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 549 F.3d 62 (2d Cir. 2008) (withholding name redactions from a commutation petition under Exemptions 6 & 7(C)). Thus, Exemption 6 does not permit ICE to withhold the redacted federal employee names. As for Exemption 7(C), the Court asks whether these emails were “compiled for law enforcement purposes.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C). While ICE is obviously a federal law enforcement agency, not every document ICE produces or amasses has been “compiled for law enforcement purposes.” Id. “Courts have generally interpreted Exemption 7 as applying to records that pertain to specific investigations conducted by agencies, whether internal or external, and whether created or collected by the agency—in other words, investigatory files.” Families for Freedomv. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 797 F. Supp. 2d 375, 397 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (collecting cases interpreting Exemption 7). The documents at issue are not investigatory files.

(Case 1:14-cv-03305 Document 144, Filed: 04/08/20 Page 25-27.)

Many thanks to Nicolette Glazer for her terrific briefing on this and other cases carrying on the litigation Andrew Free initiated on my behalf in 2014, when he filed a complaint to enforce my rights to documents about the contracts between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the prison firms GEO and then-Correction Corporation of America, now CoreCivic.

GEO Karnes TRO
The FOIA litigation against ICE produced documents from which I quoted and linked in a law review article on the labor and employment law violations by these firms and was used in class action litigation against GEO and CoreCivic.  Federal judges and appellate courts have ruled against GEO and CoreCivic and the cases are going forward.

On April 6, 2020, attorneys filed a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order on behalf of "those subject to the Housing Unit Sanitation Policy (HUSP)."  The motion points out that

The living conditions encourage the rapid transmission of the virus and exposure to COVID-19 throughout the GEO facilities. And yet, GEO’s HUSPs still force Class Members to clean the epicenter of COVID-19’s spread at its facilities—the common spaces. GEO provides no protection to these workers, so they are unnecessarily exposed to COVID-19 because of GEO’s HUSP program. The circumstances call for immediate action to protect the Class Members where their ward, GEO, has completely failed.  5:17-cv-02514-JGB-SHK Document 252-1 Filed 04/06/20, pages 7-8.

Other cases in this litigation continue to move forward, including that of the nation-wide class of those alleging state and federal labor and trafficking law violations in the case against the GEO facility in Adelanto, California.