DHS Struggles Under FOIA Backlog

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is struggling to keep up with a record-breaking number of open-records requests under the Freedom of Information Act in 2014, a vast majority of which dealt with immigration-related records, according to [an April 8, 2015] report.

The DHS said it received nearly 292,000 requests under FOIA, the most of any single federal department. A vast majority of these were directed at three agencies under the DHS umbrella: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Despite closing more cases than it had in years past, DHS said by the end of the fiscal year the number of cases it considers backlogged had more than doubled, topping 103,000.

“The increased volume and complexity of requests for immigration records has directly affected the department’s backlog,”  DHS Chief FOIA Officer Karen L. Neuman said in the report.

The department said last year’s influx of requests continues a recent trend, as open-records requests to the department have increased 128 percent since President Barack Obama took office in 2009. These requests have been dominated by people seeking immigration-related documents like entry and exit reports as well as detention and deportation records. 

According to the report, 94 percent of the overall requests in 2014 were submitted to USCIS, CBP and ICE, the department’s three predominantly immigration-related agencies.

USCIS easily topped the list as the single busiest agency, receiving 143,794 requests. ICE was a distant second with 85,081 requests.

The DHS and its various agencies have come under some legal fire recently from lawyers and civil rights group upset with the department’s handling of FOIA requests.

Last month, a group of plaintiffs filed a suit accusing CBP of violating federal law by allowing tens of thousands of immigration record requests to stall for months or even years beyond the required 20-day processing period.

Two weeks later, a civil liberties group in New Orleans claimed it had waited more than 1.5 years but still hadn’t received any of the documents it sought concerning ICE’s Criminal Alien Removal Initiative. The program has come under scrutiny from critics who say law enforcement conducts broad raids and sweeps targeting Latino communities under the guise of the program, violating constitutional and civil rights.

The American Immigration Council also recently prevailed in its bid to get the DHS to turn over information about noncitizens' access to counsel during their interactions with federal immigration authorities.

In its report, the DHS said it was able to process about 238,000 of the requests it received in 2014, about 16 percent more than the year before. And of the more simple requests, about 80 percent were quickly processed and resolved in the 20-day window, it said.

Nonetheless, the DHS backlog has swelled and the department is working to address what Neuman called an immense challenge.

That includes trying to offer better training to educate and encourage agency compliance with FOIA as well as utilizing advanced technology for processing requests. It also hired three outside contractors and partnered with individual agencies to process some of the oldest requests." - Law360, Apr. 10, 2015.