What Part of Illegal Don't You Understand? - DHS Breaks the Law Again

by Dave Bennion

Published November 18, 2008 @ 09:02PM PT

A pattern is emerging in DHS's response to requests for information relating to immigrants under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): ignore, stonewall, and deny.  In a supposed nation of laws, DHS routinely violates federal law by subverting the Act.

First, Marisa Treviño picked up on something in a recent report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities on U.S. mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children, A Child Alone and Without Papers.

[T]he most appalling incident cited in this report was how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purposely stonewalled, denied or ignored repeated requests and Freedom of Information Act requests to gather the necessary data to help with this report.

In an attempt to analyze policies, procedures, and statistics pertaining to the removal and repatriation of unaccompanied children from Mexico and Honduras, we submitted seven Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These requests, submitted in June 2007, ranged from inquiries regarding basic statistics to training materials for immigration staff to international agreements.

Six requests were either denied or responses were extended well beyond the publication of this study. Various reasons were given for the denial of a request or the delay in a response. For example, the department combined four separate unrelated requests under one FOIA case number and then responded that the request was too long to respond to within the standard time limits.

One request was closed for reasons that are unclear.

. . .

One can only surmise given the uncooperative responses of the DHS that they either believe themselves to be above the law or are hiding facts they know would be detrimental to themselves and this administration in its last days.

I guess if you were being generous, you might chalk up the failure to respond in accordance with federal law to lack of resources or bureaucratic ineptitude.  That would be a generosity that DHS rarely extends to migrants who violate the law--but when you are in charge of enforcing the laws in George Bush's America, you are held to a different standard than your average shmoe.

But that wouldn't explain the persistent complaints of practitioners that DHS is not properly fulfilling FOIA requests.

Or this story about DHS's apparent effort to drum up a big counterterrorism success story in late 2004 to help push George Bush into a second term of office. 

The program seems to have relied almost exclusively on racial profiling.  And it was a bust.

As the Bush administration prepares to make its disgraced exit from Washington, new information has come to light about a secret national security program launched in the waning days of the 2004 presidential election that targeted thousands of innocent Muslim immigrants as suspected terrorists.

Operation Front Line's stated goal was to disrupt terrorist cells that might be planning an attack during the campaign or on inauguration day.

But government documents recently obtained by a team of Yale Law School students and faculty expose Operation Front Line as a massive fishing expedition that hinged on racial profiling.

One reason few people have heard of Operation Front Line is that it failed to produce results.  If the program had succeeded, the administration would have trumpeted it from the rooftops.  Another reason you haven't heard of it is that DHS ignored a series of FOIA requests from Yale, again in violation of federal law.

. . . Yale Law School's National Litigation Project, a human rights advocacy clinic, filed a freedom of information request, and later a federal lawsuit, seeking records on the operation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), its umbrella agency the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a half dozen other agencies.

That launched a two-year legal battle during which the feds continually stonewalled the Yale lawyers, blowing off laws requiring an answer within 20 days, or saying they couldn't supply information for national security reasons.

The Yale lawyers didn't buy it and kept fighting for the records' release. Homeland Security finally relented in September of this year, reaching a partial settlement with Yale that supplied them with thousands of pages of heavily redacted case files and internal memos the feds previously claimed couldn't possibly be shared.

The Yale team soon discovered what they suspect is the reason for the secrecy. ICE supplied them with 300 individual case files, selected at random from ICE offices all over the country. Separately, they supplied every case file from the Hartford office, about 25.

What they found was that Operation Front Line, conducted in two phases from May 2004 through February 2005, was a total bust. The sweeping immigration enforcement campaign involved 504 people and was justified on national security grounds, but didn't result in a single terror-related arrest. The worst crimes in the Yale files were identity theft and credit card forgery.

"What a huge waste of government resources," says Ahmed. "They were talking to people who are doctors and students and engineers, who come from Muslim backgrounds, and asking them the most widespread questions just to try to find something."

The information supplied by ICE shows a disturbing trend of what could only be read as ethnic profiling. Of the 300 immigrants, 79 percent were from Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Somalia. Immigrants from Muslim-majority countries account for just one percent of the undocumented population in the U.S., meaning they were 1,280 times more likely to be targeted by Operation Front Line than non-Muslim counterparts.

Only 18 percent of the operation's targets were charged with any immigration violation at all; the most common, an overstayed visa. Three-quarters of them were men.

. . .

Another report, heavily redacted, describes an immigrant who entered on a student visa and caught ICE's eye in 2002 when he or she opened an account with $100,000 in wired money. The report mentions subsequent transfers for $60,000 and $10,000 but deciphering why or what for is impossible. "All this for a 20 year old in the United States on a student visa," the report reads.

The terms of the F-1 student visa require an applicant to show ability to pay for much of his or her education up front.  This can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars and makes student visas available only to the relatively wealthy.  F-1 visa holders are restricted in the type of employment they can get, due to Congress's paranoia that students might work to support themselves.

In other words, the government required this student to show his family had bank to comply with the immigration laws, then got suspicious when they followed the rules.

I'm reminded of my 4-month old kitten, who gets distracted by his own tail and tries to bite it, then runs under the table when someone sneezes.  Capricious, inefficient, paranoid.  And dumb.  My kitten has an excuse: his brain is the size of a walnut.  What is the government's excuse?

Oh, and they lied to the American people.  After the last eight years, it's hard to muster much of a reaction to one more item on a long list of betrayals.

ICE put out a news release that hinted at the scope of Operation Front Line without referring to it by name. The operation would go after immigrant status violators based on "national security criteria" and anyone out of status would be arrested. Importantly, ICE said it was operating "without regard to race, ethnicity or religion."

"ICE is not conducting a 'round-up' or a 'sweep' in any community," the release read. "ICE is not profiling based on race or religious affiliation."

Obviously untrue.  Could this be why DHS worked so hard to evade its FOIA obligations?

The pattern is there for all to see: DHS routinely violates the Freedom of Information Act to prevent politically damaging information from coming to light.  FOIA was intended to shine sunlight on government operations to keep government accountable to the citizenry and reduce corruption and malfeasance.  Systematic violation of the Act is like smoke you see from the fire you don't see--it means that someone in government is up to no good and trying to keep it a secret.

I have a feeling there is a lot more that will come to light if the next administration stops violating FOIA.  But I wonder whether those taking the reins can so easily put restraints and controls on their own freedom of action back into place.  The answer to this question will say a lot about the next administration.