Irwin OIG Report

To Whom It May Concern:

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

1. Working papers for the DHS-OIG Report released January 6, 2021, captioned OIG-22-14.
2. All communications sent or received by DHS-OIG pertaining to the investigation(s) producing this report.
3. All communications sent or received by DHS-OIG regarding the conclusions or findings in this report.
4. Any record demonstrating the amount of federal funds DHS-OIG expended on the contract teams who contributed to this report.
5. Copies of all agreements, contracts, performance work statements, or any other similar records reflecting the DHS-OIG’s scope of work for the reviewers who contributed to this report but were not employed by DHS-OIG.
6. Any DHS-OIG record containing the terms “Cuccinelli” and “Irwin”.

I hereby request expedited processing of this request pursuant to 6 CFR 5.5(e). The allegations that prompted this abuse, and records revealed to date, demonstrate extensive government lawbreaking acknowledged by the Secretary of Homeland Security in cancelling LaSalle’s contract with the Irwin County Detention Center, and in the extensive media coverage and Congressional action — including a visit by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the passage of a Resolution by the House of Representatives condemning the abuses. I certify pursuant to 28 USC 1746 that the the foregoing is true and accurate.

I make this request on behalf of Al Otro Lado’s #DetentionKills Transparency Initiative.

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 agency’s failure to acknowledge this request and provide an individualized tracking number within 10 working days. Please remand with instructions to process this request in a timely manner.

Thank you very much for this communication. We will await the agency’s responsive documents.

Best regards,

Andrew Free

We hereby appeal the agency's failure to comply with the timing provisions of the Act.

Good afternoon,

I am writing to request that you reopen this administratively closed request and that we set up a call to discuss it. Closure is improper within the timeframe you allotted, under DOJ OIP guidelines. Please reopen the request and let me know a time we can speak.

Thank you,

Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado

Thanks very much for your response, Ms. Jones.

You offered to set up a call. We would be happy to do that and discuss. When’s good for you? and what’s a good number to call?

Thank you!

Andrew Free

Please send to andrew@detentionkills.org

Dear Ms. Jones/ FOIA/PA Officer:

Please accept this email as confirmation that we are still interested in these records, and object to closure of this file.

We request an update on the status of DHS-OIG’s processing in this case.

Thank you,

Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado

We appeal the agency’s refusal to conduct a timely search and make responsive records promptly available.

#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado

We have received no acknowledgement of this appeal, more than sixty (60) working days after filing it.

We continue to seek an appeal acknowledgment and individualized tracking number for this appeal, sent April 19, 2023. It is now August 15, 2023. Please please please (pretty please) docket this appeal and adjudicate it?

Many thanks,

Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado

Good morning,

It’s hard to understand how you can assert with certainty that these records “would be too voluminous.” Did you actually run the search? If so, what is the volume of potentially responsive records? If you close this request on 9/15, we would appeal your determination because it violates your determination obligations under the DC Circuit’s decision in CREW.

It sounds like you didn’t task any initial search for responsive records, despite the passage of 18 months since we filed this request.

And yet, you’ve asked for an agreement to narrow, saying you “cannot search for all records with those search terms.” Huh? Based on . . . Vibes?

Oh well. We’ll give this a shot.

The context of the records we seek is that in his position as a senior, unconfirmed DHS political appointee, Ken Cuccinelli took it upon himself to personally visit and “investigate” allegations of harm to people locked inside the Irwin County Detention Center, operated by LaSalle Corrections. We understand Cuccinelli reached preliminary findings, and shared those findings with other government investigators, including DHS-OIG. We understand he or his staff may have conducted interviews with personnel at Irwin, and that they may have reviewed records while there.

But Cuccinelli was not the Inspector General; he was political appointee. The Inspector General’s office was supposedly investigating allegations of harm at Irwin concurrently with this visit. So we’d like to understand how DHS-OIG’s inspection, investigations, and oversight work used Cucinnelli’s findings, or didn’t, and why.

To do that, we’d like “any DHS-OIG record that contains both “Irwin” and “Cuccinelli”. And you refuse to task that search. Why? Based on your assertion (unsupported by actual numbers, because you didn’t actually run a search) that there are just going to be soooooooooo many records that have both of those terms. Hmmm. How many, we wonder? You can’t say.

Accordingly, we would agree to narrow as follows:

1. Time period limitation - Please narrow the search window such that it begins on September 14, 2020, and ends November 30, 2022.
2. Format limitation - For responsive email communications, we’d be amenable to narrowing our requests so that we seek only the following metadata for any email containing the terms “Irwin” and “Cuccinelli”: (a) Sender; (b) recipient(s) [use the to:, cc:, and bcc: fields”; (c) date sent; (d) subject line; (e) attachment title; (f) file size.
3. Format limitation - For responsive documents appearing in Sharepoint, we will accept a list of all records containing these two terms, rather than requiring review and production of the documents that contain them. For each responsive record, simply provide the file name, file size, file format, author, creation date, and last edit date.

Narrow enough? Still “too voluminous”?

Pssst: Everyone can already see what you’re hiding with this 18-month obfuscation. Trying to continue hiding it imports the indelible stink of what others inside DHS-OIG did in this case straight into your FOIA office. You are better than this. You didn’t sign up for this. You can do better. But if you don’t believe us, we invite you to compare the findings of the bipartisan, 18-month Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with DHS-OIG’s January 2022 Irwin County inspection report.

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/hearings/medical-mistreatment-of-women-in-ice-detention/.

The IG’s prepared testimony begins at 1:34. Watch from there until the end for “context” you seek. Try watching IG Cuffari’s testimony and then watching the rest of the hearing and considering whether anything OIG did in the January 2022 inspection report is consistent with what the IG testified about.

We would very much prefer to receive these records without the need for litigation. It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that OIG FOIA shares this goal.

Please advise on an estimated date of production for this request.

Thank you,

Andrew Free

That’s correct.

Thanks for clarifying.