The ACLU is suing ICE for more information on its license plate reader contract

In January, The Verge revealed a new contract that gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to a nationwide network of license plate readers maintained by Vigilant Solutions. The contract put a powerful surveillance tool to work specifically for immigration cases, raising troubling implications for immigration and privacy groups. Those groups have been pushing for more data […]

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ICE releases personal information of immigrant-crime hotline users

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released the private information of hundreds of people who called the agency’s Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE), The Arizona Republic reported Sunday. Call logs to the VOICE hotline were posted to the agency’s website, and ICE released some private information to The Arizona Republic through a Freedom of […]

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OTG and more than 50 organizations call on ICE to comply with FOIA, release data on immigration enforcement cooperation

A coalition of organizations dedicated to government openness and accountability, human rights, civil rights, and immigrant rights is calling on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to comply with the legal obligations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and fully disclose information on immigration enforcement cooperation between federal and non-federal law enforcement agencies. We urge ICE to comply with the FOIA in a timely manner, and to permit the release of data on immigration enforcement cooperation in full compliance with local and state transparency laws.

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WI Bar: Deportation Hold Requests are Exempt from Wisconsin Public Records Law

Federal immigration agencies can request that local law enforcement hold individuals for 48 hours after taken into custody, if subject to deportation. Recently, the state supreme court ruled those immigration hold requests are exempt from public records law.

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Lawsuit against ICE seeks information on asylum seekers

Civil rights advocates filed a lawsuit in San Francisco on Thursday against the federal government in an attempt to get information about how many detained asylum seekers are denied parole and how such decisions were made.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law and others want to know why fewer asylum seekers are being offered parole.

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Feds Settle With Immigration Attorneys Over FOIA Backlog

Immigration attorneys and their clients have settled claims with U.S. Customs and Border Protection over thousands of unanswered Freedom of Information Act requests.

Led by Glendale attorney Meredith Brown, a proposed class of immigration lawyers said that by the end of fiscal year 2013, the agency had a backlog of nearly 38,000 FOIA requests that had been pending for more than the 20 days permitted by the law.

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TRAC challenges ICE claim that data off-limits to public

From Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC):

Syracuse, NY, October 23 — The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) has filed a suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) challenging a ruling by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that its master repository of investigations and operations information is off-limits to the public.

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