American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project v. United States…
American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- George Daniels
- 1:19-cv-07058
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 15
In American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Judge Daniels denied the ACLU’s motion and granted ICE’s motion.
The ruling affected the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project’s request for ICE records and confirmed that ICE was not required in this case to create and provide the requested unique identifiers.
What happened
American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement concerned a request under the Freedom of Information Act for immigration-enforcement data. The ACLU wanted ICE to replace protected personal identification numbers with unique identifiers so individuals could be tracked across data categories.
The ACLU and ICE both asked for judgment without a trial. The ACLU argued that creating the identifiers was a permissible computer search, segregation of nonprotected information, or formatting change. ICE argued that its databases did not contain the requested identifiers and that producing them would require creating a new record.
Judge George B. Daniels ruled for ICE. He denied the ACLU’s motion and granted ICE’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the ACLU’s claims, because the Freedom of Information Act does not require an agency to create new records or transform existing information into the requested identifiers.
The detailed version
- American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project v. United States… · No. 1:19-cv-07058
- George Daniels
- Mar. 10, 2021
Background
The American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project (the “ACLU”) submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) on October 3, 2018. It sought spreadsheet data concerning removals or deportations, detentions, apprehensions, risk-classification assessments, and transactions related to immigration bonds. The ACLU requested that alien numbers, or “A-numbers,” be replaced with unique identifiers that would allow individuals to be tracked within and across the requested data categories.
ICE searched its Integrated Decision Support System and produced 40 spreadsheet tabs containing slightly more than one million rows of data covering 2012 through 2019. ICE withheld the A-numbers under FOIA privacy exemptions and did not provide the requested unique identifiers. ICE stated that its database did not contain person-centered unique identifiers and that it lacked a computer program that could replace A-numbers with them.
After the production, the parties partially settled the case and limited the summary-judgment dispute to whether FOIA required ICE to provide unique identifiers in place of A-numbers. The parties then filed cross-motions for summary judgment, which asks whether the undisputed record entitles a party to judgment as a matter of law without a trial.
Parties’ Arguments
The ACLU argued that the information connecting records to individuals was nonexempt information that ICE could separate from the protected A-numbers. It maintained that ICE could use computer searches or programming to create the identifiers without creating a new record. The ACLU also argued that FOIA’s segregability requirement required ICE to release the nonexempt relational information and that the requested identifiers were a readily reproducible format. Finally, the ACLU argued that ICE’s earlier production of unique identifiers in response to other requests supported its position.
ICE argued that the requested unique identifiers did not already exist in its database. According to ICE’s declaration, producing them would require creating a computer program, processing millions of entries, generating new identifiers, replacing the A-numbers, and maintaining the program and identifiers. ICE contended that FOIA requires agencies to provide existing records, not to create new records or conduct additional research and analysis.
Court’s Analysis
The court held that the request for unique identifiers required the creation of a new record. FOIA requires agencies to conduct reasonable searches for existing records, but it does not require them to generate records that they have not created and retained. The court distinguished ordinary database searching and sorting from producing a new listing or set of information that did not previously exist.
The court found that ICE’s database contained A-numbers but did not contain the requested unique identifiers or relational information as existing data fields. The requested information therefore was not simply information that could be sorted or extracted from the database. Instead, ICE would have to create the identifiers and substitute them for the A-numbers.
The court rejected the ACLU’s segregability argument because FOIA does not require an agency to separate and produce information that does not already exist as a record. It also rejected the argument that FOIA’s requirement to provide records in a requested form or format applied. The court explained that “form or format” concerns the medium or electronic structure of an existing record, such as paper, a thumb drive, a PDF, or a JPEG; it does not require an agency to transform A-numbers into new unique identifiers.
The court also concluded that ICE’s prior production of unique identifiers did not change its FOIA obligations. The earlier identifiers differed from those requested by the ACLU, and ICE had provided them as an exercise of discretion.
Disposition
The court granted ICE’s motion for summary judgment, dismissing the ACLU’s claims. It denied the ACLU’s cross-motion for summary judgment. The Clerk of Court was directed to close the motions.
Read the full 15-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.