IHSC Mortality Reviews
| Tracking # |
2023-ICAP-00149 2022-ICAP-01032 |
| Submitted | May 8, 2019 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Andrew Free
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
All Immigrant Health Services Corps (IHSC) Mortality Reviews created since January 1, 2017.
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
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
May 17, 2019 Andrew Free MuckRock News DEPT MR 72921 411A Highland Ave Somerville, MA 02144-2516 RE: ICE FOIA Case Number 2019-ICFO-38745 Dear Mr. Free: This acknowledges receipt of your May 08, 2019, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), for all Immigrant Health Services Corps (IHSC) Mortality Reviews created since January 1, 2017. Your request was received in this office on May 08, 2019. Due to the increasing number of FOIA requests received by this office, we may encounter some delay in processing your request. Per Section 5.5(a) of the DHS FOIA regulations, 6 C.F.R. Part 5, ICE processes FOIA requests according to their order of receipt. Although ICE’s goal is to respond within 20 business days of receipt of your request, the FOIA does permit a 10- day extension of this time period. As your request seeks numerous documents that will necessitate a thorough and wide-ranging search, ICE will invoke a 10-day extension for your request, as allowed by Title 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(B). If you care to narrow the scope of your request, please contact our office. We will make every effort to comply with your request in a timely manner. Provisions of the FOIA allow us to recover part of the cost of complying with your request. We shall charge you for records in accordance with the DHS Interim FOIA regulations, as they apply to media requesters. As a media requester, you will be charged 10 cents per page for duplication; the first 100 pages are free. We will construe the submission of your request as an agreement to pay up to $25.00. You will be contacted before any further fees are accrued. We have queried the appropriate program offices within ICE for responsive records. If any responsive records are located, they will be reviewed for determination of releasability. Please be assured that one of the processors in our office will respond to your request as expeditiously as possible. We appreciate your patience as we proceed with your request.
Your request has been assigned reference number 2019-ICFO-38745. Please refer to this identifier in any future correspondence. To check the status of an ICE FOIA/PA request, please visit . Please note that to check the status of a request, you must enter the 2019-ICFO-38745 tracking number. If you need any further assistance or would like to discuss any aspect of your request, please contact the FOIA office. You may send an e-mail to ice-foia@ice.dhs.gov, call toll free (866) 633-1182, or you may contact our FOIA Public Liaison, Fernando Pineiro, in the same manner. Additionally, you have a right to right to seek dispute resolution services from the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) which mediates disputes between FOIA requesters and Federal agencies as a non-exclusive alternative to litigation. If you are requesting access to your own records (which is considered a Privacy Act request), you should know that OGIS does not have the authority to handle requests made under the Privacy Act of 1974. You may contact OGIS as follows: Office of Government Information Services, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road-OGIS, College Park, Maryland 20740-6001, e-mail at ogis@nara.gov; telephone at 202-741-5770; toll free at 1-877-684-6448; or facsimile at 202-741-5769. (http://www.dhs.gov/foia-status) http://www.dhs.gov/foia-status
Regards,
ICE FOIA Office
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Freedom of Information Act Office
500 12th Street, S.W., Stop 5009
Washington, D.C. 20536-5009
Telephone: 1-866-633-1182
Visit our FOIA website at www.ice.gov/foia
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 8, 2019. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Andrew Free
I hereby appeal the agency’s violation of the Act’s timing provisions and the Promptly Available requirement.
This is not a complicated search. There is no good reason for it to take more than 3 years to complete—only bad ones.
Please remand to the FOIA Office and release responsive records without further delay.
Thank you,
Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
**Please Do Not Respond Directly -This email has been sent on behalf of ice-foia@dhs.gov**
We have received your Freedom of Information Act request for Appeal and have assigned it tracking number 2022-ICAP-01032. Please refer to the attached Acknowledgement Letter for more information.
ICE FOIA.
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Mr. Free,
ICE's final response to your FOIA request, 2022-ICAP-01032, for Appeal is attached.
Please note that the attachment may be password protected. If you are prompted to enter a password when opening the attachment and you did not receive a password it may be in your junk/spam folder.
Sincerely,
ICE FOIA
From: Andrew Free
On behalf of Al Otro Lado’s #DetentionKills Transparency Initiative, to whom I have assigned this request under Nat’l Sec. Counselors (DDC), we hereby appeal the agency’s response in full.
For the reasons outline below, we respectfully seek expedited processing of this request pursuant to 6 C.F.R. 5.5(e).
Basis of Appeal
1. The agency conducted an inadequate search.
ICE produced 13 Mortality Reviews in response to our FOIA request. The time period in the request covered January 1, 2017, to the present, which we believe, based on the date ranges represented in the responsive documents, ICE FOIA likely considered to fall in May 2019. The key problem with ICE’s production, which demonstrates the inadequacy of its search, is that there are more humans who perished in ICE custody during that period. 24 in total, to be exact.
By separate FOIA requests, which ICE assigned control numbers 2019-ICFO-39213 and 2019-ICAP-00532, ICE FOIA supplied us with records records indicating it only had four (4) open death investigations pending on May 8, 2019. See https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/open-dhs-death-investigations-department-of-homeland-security-72903/.
Accordingly, the response ICE provided is missing Mortality Reviews or the following people who perished in ICE custody between January 1, 2017, and May 8, 2019:
Sergio Alonso Lopez
Vicente Caceres-Maradiaga
Osvadis Montesino-Cabrera
Felipe Almazan-Ruiz
Yulio Castro-Garrido
Luis Ramirez-Marcano
Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion
Efrain Romero de la Rosa
2. Improper Withholdings
None of the individual privacy interests of senior IHSC and ICE Medical and Detention Officials would be foreseeably harmed in the event of release, and any such harm is outweighed by the public interest in being about to connect the findings of each Mortality Review to the individuals who participated in these findings—especially where these findings depart from well-established standards of care.
The recommendations included in Mortality Reviews are not subject to withholding under Exemption 5, because no decision is being deliberated to which the recommendations are pre-decisional. Accordingly, withholding of recommendations is improper.
Finally, the frequency of cell checks for potentially suicidal people in solitary confinement is a matter of publicly released IHSC policy, and not properly subject to 7E redactions for law enforcement privilege. No law enforcement investigation is being conducted against a person placed in confinement, and consequently, the information ICE withheld does not receive protection under Exemption 7. It’s medical practice information, and that’s subject to release.
3. Expedited Processing Requests.
These records concern a matter of widespread public concern about which there exist serious, documented questions regarding the performance of the government’s functions, and observed departures from legal requirements. Indeed, in at least one of the deaths represented in these records, a contract staffer was referred by DHS-OIG for criminal prosecution. More broadly, Congressional oversight bodies have documented how these records—though not released in full—suggest rampant, unchecked harm inside ICE’s detention system. https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2020-09-24.%20Staff%20Report%20on%20ICE%20Contractors.pdf
As average daily population increases from 13,000 to 30,000 in ICE’s detention centers, the frequency of in-custody deaths seems to be increasing, too.
Finally, the failure to secure these records now, as opposed to another three years from now on remand, if the agency’s current pace holds, poses the very real risk that as a result of the same deficiencies which led to excluding these 8 deaths from the released dataset, those Mortality Reviews will be destroyed in violation of the Federal Records Act, as other DHS and ICE records have: https://www.americanoversight.org/ice-admits-to-practice-of-deleting-senior-officials-text-messages-during-trump-administration.
Expedited processing is therefore vital to ensuring the public’s right to know what ICE was up to when it comes to this missing Mortality Reviews.
I hereby certify under penalty of perjury pursuant to 28 USC 1746 that the foregoing statements in support of expedited processing are true and correct to the best of my knowledge.
Thank you,
Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
**Please Do Not Respond Directly -This email has been sent on behalf of ice-foia@dhs.gov**
We have received your Freedom of Information Act request for Appealing the adequacy of the search, improper withholdings, and expedited processing. and have assigned it tracking number 2023-ICAP-00149. Please refer to the attached Acknowledgement Letter for more information.
ICE FOIA.
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Mr. Free,
ICE's final response to your FOIA request, 2023-ICAP-00149, for Appealing the adequacy of the search, improper withholdings, and expedited processing. is attached.
Please note that the attachment may be password protected. If you are prompted to enter a password when opening the attachment and you did not receive a password it may be in your junk/spam folder.
Sincerely,
ICE FOIA
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 8, 2019. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response. You had assigned it reference number #2023-ICAP-00149.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Good morning,
Thank you for reaching out regarding your request 2023-ICAP-00149, it is currently in the queue to be processed by an analyst. Requests are processed on a first in, first out basis and timing can vary greatly depending on the volume of responsive documents received. Thank you for your continued patience.
Sincerely,
ICE/FOIA
-
~WRD0002
From: Andrew Free
We hereby appeal the agency’s now four-year refusal time make a full, complete, and transparent production in response to this request.
Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
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