5 USC 552(a)(2)(D)(ii)(II), or Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Meetings (Department of Homeland Security, Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

This is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request aimed at understanding your agency’s compliance with the E-FOIA Amendments of 2006, and how the information contained, and omitted from, your agency’s FOIA Reading Room may come short of compliance with your obligations under the law.

Ensuring agencies proactively disclose frequently requested records helps everyone. The agency’s FOIA backlog — a longstanding, widely acknowledge concern for Congress — will be reduced by affirmative identification of frequently requested records. The agency will get fewer requests by making more of the frequently requested materials more easily accessible. Agency FOIA reviewers will not have to reinvent the wheel in processing redactions and determine which exemptions apply. And the public will get more complete and timely access to information because the agency will have posted it.

This is not an aspirational goal; it is the law.

5 U.S.C. 552(a)(2)(D)(ii)(II) requires agencies to post records that have been requested 3 or more times. The “Beetlejuice Provision”, if you will.

Our review of your agency’s public FOIA reading room, and a comparison of the publicly available FOIA logs your agency publishes, reveals that a number of thrice-requested materials appear to be missing. Consequently, we file this request to understand the process by which your agency determines what to include under the Beetlejuice Provision.

1. Please provide all calendar entries, meeting minutes, attendee lists, working papers (or similar documents), slide decks or presentations, and follow-up calendar items for any meeting your agency’s FOIA Officer or designee held to consider the agency’s affirmative releases and proactive disclosures under the Beetlejuice Provision.

2. Please provide any record reflecting your agency’s FOIA Officers’ identification of a record that may be eligible for release based upon the Beetlejuice Provision because it has been requested three times under paragraph 3. If the records requested are kept in an electronic system of records, like eFOIAExpress, we would accept a printout of requests designated as potential subject to proactive release under the Beetlejuice Provision in lieu of records responsive to this Item.

3. Any guidance your agency issued for FOIA professionals regarding identification of requests that are potentially subject to proactive release under the Beetlejuice Provision.

Please task a search period beginning on January 1, 2022, and ending May 18, 2022.

Thank you,

Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Andrew Free

I hereby appeal the adequacy of the agency’s search, as it appears to constitute an admission that CRCL FOIA has taken zero steps to follow the law. Either the agency is complying with the Beetlejuice provision by creating and maintaining records showing which requests are subject to it, and what will be affirmatively released to the public without request, and thus, the agency has failed to conduct an adequacy search for those records; OR the agency is simply ignoring the Beetlejuice provision.

Thank you for your prompt response.

Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado