‘Incredible ruling for transparency’: Court blocks ICE from destroying abuse records – By Gabe Ortiz (Daily Kos) / Mar 16 2021
A federal judge has blocked the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency from continuing with its plans to destroy vital records pertaining to in-custody deaths and detainee abuse, three watchdog organizations that sued for the preservation of these documents announced last Friday.
“This is an incredible ruling for transparency,” said Noah Bookbinder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), one of the groups that last year sued ICE and the National Archives and Records Administration. “To destroy records revealing abuse, rights violations and even deaths in detention would further obscure a system already severely lacking in oversight and transparency.”
CREW, the American Historical Association (AHA), and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) sued last March, after the National Archives gave ICE the green light to delete crucial documents. The groups said that while the public submitted 23,000 comments to the National Archives opposing the move—“a record-breaking number for the agency”—ICE’s request was largely allowed to go on.
“In December 2019, NARA approved ICE’s plan to destroy detainee records despite widespread alarm around abuse of detainees,” the groups said at the time. “Several categories of records, including those documenting detainee deaths, sexual assault and abuse, civil rights violations, inhumane solitary confinement practices, and violations of ICE detention standards, are set to be destroyed, with some slated for destruction as early as this year.”
