ACLU Sues Federal Agencies for Records Detailing Infrastructure Needed for Mass Detention and Deportation Program

NEW YORK — The American Civil Liberties Union and Goodwin Procter LLP today filed a lawsuit against several federal agencies to obtain records addressing federal immigration authorities’ capacity to implement a mass detention and deportation campaign. The lawsuit comes weeks after the agencies – which include Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by the ACLU in August 2024. The litigation is the ACLU’s latest effort to prepare for the immigration actions that may be taken by future administrations.

“With the threat of mass detention and deportations looming, the public has a right to understand our immigration infrastructure and how it could be used to become an even more destructive deportation machine,” said My Khanh Ngo, staff attorney at the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Today's filing is a critical step in our preparations to fight back against threats to immigrants’ rights posed by any administration.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, demands that ICE, DHS, DOJ, and CBP comply with the Freedom of Information Act and immediately turn over the requested records to the ACLU, which include:

• Records from ICE that show bed space available to ICE, including all currently operational or contracted ICE detention facilities

• Records from DHS regarding its policies for reassigning personnel from one DHS component to another

• Records from CBP regarding its ground transportation of noncitizens between detention centers and to airports for removal

• Legal memoranda from DHS and DOJ discussing the meaning of the “mass influx” provision of the immigration laws

“Every year, federal agencies like ICE waste billions of taxpayer dollars to punish people seeking a better life by locking them up in detention facilities known for pervasive medical neglect, abuse, and other civil rights violations,” said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The documents requested will help us understand how any administration could expand the abusive immigration detention machine and carry out extreme anti-immigrant policies like mass deportations.”

Today’s filing also comes on the heels of a new FOIA lawsuit from the ACLU requesting documents regarding ICE’s potential plans to expand immigration detention across the country. Advocates warn that additional contracts will undoubtedly lead to further abuses in immigration detention and could potentially lay the groundwork for a presidential administration to implement mass deportations and raids.

“Little is known about how the detention and deportation apparatus actually operates despite the fact that the government spends billions of dollars every year to fund immigration detention and deportations,” said Linnea Cipriano, partner at Goodwin Procter LLP. “The Freedom of Information Act requires federal agencies like DHS and other to provide transparency in a timely manner, and our lawsuit will bring us one step closer to uncovering how our government could potentially implement a mass detention and deportation program on the taxpayers’ dime.”

The complaint is available here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-foia-complaint-mass-detention-deportation