American Immigration Council v. United States Citizenship and Immigration…

Background

The plaintiffs—American Immigration Council, American Immigration Lawyers Association, and Human Rights Watch—filed this Freedom of Information Act case concerning four requests for records about the Migrant Protection Protocols. The defendants are United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, United States Customs and Border Protection, and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The parties explained that, after the Supreme Court’s decision in a related case, they understood that the Migrant Protection Protocols would not be implemented going forward. They agreed that the only remaining issue was the plaintiffs’ request for documents containing daily situational reports from Customs and Border Protection. Customs and Border Protection agreed to provide the documents subject to appropriate Freedom of Information Act redactions. After production, the parties planned to meet and confer about any objections to the redactions and propose a briefing schedule for unresolved objections. The plaintiffs agreed not to seek attorney’s fees or costs.

Ruling

The parties jointly requested that the further case-management conference scheduled for October 5, 2022, be vacated and continued to December 7, 2022. Judge Donna Ryu granted that scheduling request as modified. The order set the conference for December 7, 2022, at 1:30 p.m., in Oakland by videoconference, and required the parties to file an updated joint case-management statement by November 30, 2022. The order did not decide the remaining document-production or redaction dispute.