ICE Sued for Allegedly Shielding Immigrant Detainee Records (1)

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is suing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for allegedly unlawfully withholding information about immigrant detainees in county jails.

“The Records Rule has placed most records about county-held immigration detainees in an impenetrable black box, shielding them from public scrutiny,” according to the ACLU’s suit filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The ACLU says ICE’s use of a rule blocks the release of information related to detained immigrants that would ordinarily be disclosed through a federal or state records request, according to the complaint filed Wednesday against ICE and the US Department of Homeland Security.

The ACLU claims that several of its state and federal FOIA requests seeking information about immigrant detainees held in Michigan county jails have been denied under the Records Rule by both the jails and ICE. The organization says the agency’s use of the rule is impeding the ACLU’s work to “inform the public about county jail conditions and immigration detention practices, and to provide effective legal support for and advocate on behalf of detained people.”

This suit comes on the heels of several lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant support organizations in response to President Donald Trump’s executive orders concerning immigration. The groups say one of the executive orders to end birthright citizenship, signed on Trump’s first day in office and set to take effect Feb. 19, violates the US Constitution and federal immigration policies and is barred by more than a century of precedent. The latest suit, filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, is brought by groups representing pregnant women in the US who say their children could be denied citizenship under the Jan. 20 order.

The complaint here says ICE contracts with dozens of county jails across the country to detain immigrants for civil immigration enforcement. Many of the county jails “treat detained immigrants much like any other person detained on state criminal charges, subjecting them to the same intake, medical, dietary, and disciplinary regimes,” it says.

Those records are considered to be under ICE’s control, which causes county jails to deny state Freedom of Information Act requests, according to the complaint.

But ICE allegedly doesn’t disclose the information through federal FOIA requests because it doesn’t possess most of the records that are generated and held by county jails, the suit says.

The rule was issued in an effort to prevent sensitive national security information from being disclosed to the public in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the complaint says. But the ACLU asserts that Congress specified that records can only be exempted from disclosure under FOIA by “explicit statutory language,” rather than through regulatory processes, which could be used to shield records from disclosure, it says.

The ACLU’s suit against ICE and DHS asserts violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and requests the court vacate the rule as applied to records not in ICE’s possession.

DHS declined to comment. ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU Foundation represents the organization.

The case is Am. C.L. Union of Mich. v. U.S. Immigr. and Customs Enf’t, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-00184, complaint filed 1/22/25.