ICE stops tracking some detainee deaths

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

I’m Lauren Harper, the first Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), and welcome to The Classifieds. Read on to learn about this week’s top secrecy news.

ICE rolls back post-release death reporting and eases private detention standards

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently reversed a long-standing policy of tracking and reporting the deaths of detainees that occur within 30 days of their release from federal custody. This will undermine a 2014 congressional requirement that ICE report on deaths to ensure that federal detention does not lead to untracked fatalities.

Despite the policy reversal, ICE is still required to take safety into account when releasing individuals. A week after the recent change, however, Pittsburgh authorities ruled the death of Daphy Michel, an asylum seeker from Haiti who died of hypothermia within days of being released from ICE custody earlier this year, a homicide. The medical examiner noted that Michel was a “vulnerable adult, suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier when she was released.”

While the agency is making it more difficult to determine whether its facility conditions and release policies are directly contributing to deaths, it is also lowering the standards for its detention centers at the behest of The GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies it contracts with. At the company’s request, ICE made a number of changes to its rules, including deleting references stating that “contractors needed to follow state and local laws around the treatment of detainees,” The Washington Post reported.

The changes were implemented without public comment.

California bill targets private prison secrecy

California state Sen. Lena Gonzalez recently introduced the Detention Facility Transparency Act to increase public oversight of private detention facilities operating in the state. Because these for-profit centers are run by private contractors like The GEO Group, they are shielded from federal Freedom of Information Act requests. The bill would help fill this transparency gap by amending the California Public Records Act to mandate that local agencies release 911 call records and other emergency dispatches from these facilities, creating an important paper trail to track conditions and potential abuses.

White House plot to suspend habeas corpus highlights importance of leaks and records law

The government must justify why it jails someone. It’s a core tenet of the Constitution — and President Donald Trump’s top aide, Stephen Miller, wanted to discard it to fast-track the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants.

A leaked White House memo published by The New York Times revealed how far the discussion to suspend habeas corpus went, and how alarmed White House lawyers were by Miller’s proposal. Another leaked memo showed that lawyers were equally alarmed by senior administration officials’ plan to invoke the Insurrection Act in the aftermath of the shooting of nurse Alex Pretti by immigration agents in Minnesota in January, deploying military forces against “the enemy within.”

Beyond exposing how far this administration is willing to go, the reporting underscores two things: the continued importance of leaks in understanding the radical policy debates taking place in the White House, and why FPF’s ongoing legal fight for the preservation of — and access to — presidential records is so critical.

Both of these points were further proven by a separate Washington Post report exposing the ballooning cost of the new White House ballroom. While the president repeatedly claimed the project would be entirely privately funded, internal communications between the White House and Clark Construction, the group awarded the building contract, show the price tag now tops $600 million — and that taxpayers are paying for more than half the bill.

Archivist nomination hearing focuses on presidential records

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held confirmation hearings on Wednesday, including for Bradford Wilson, the nominee to be archivist of the United States. Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member, led with the most important question: How will you ensure President Donald Trump doesn’t again violate the Presidential Records Act and take presidential records with him when he leaves office at the end of his second term? Wilson’s response was: “I’m a rule of law man, and I intend to follow the law, including on the subject of the disposition of federal records.”

This doesn’t actually answer Peters’ question, since presidential records operate under an entirely separate statute than federal records, with different disposition authorities. Watch the hearing here.

Transparently yours,

Lauren Harper

Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy
Freedom of the Press Foundation