ICE Says It Doesn’t Have Bodycam Footage Of Chicago Raids
ICE Says It Doesn’t Have Bodycam Footage Of Chicago Raids Despite Court Order
A nonprofit watchdog agency is concerned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials aren’t following a court order after ICE told them it had “no records” of body camera footage produced during the ICE raids in Chicago.
According to The New York Times, the Freedom of the Press Foundation requested “all body-worn camera footage” taken as part of “Operation Midway Blitz,” raids it conducted in Chicago throughout the Fall. ICE told the nonprofit that “no records responsive to your request were found.” This response is alarming for several reasons.
Judge Sara L. Ellis, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, ordered ICE agents to wear body cameras due to concerns over ICE’s use of force tactics. In fact, she made that order in response to bodycam footage that the agency submitted to the court. So at the very least, ICE should have some bodycam footage to produce.
“Sometimes a no response is more telling than having records,” Anne Weismann, who oversaw records litigations during her tenure at the Justice Department, told the Times. “And this may be one of those cases.” Lauren Harper, who advocates for government transparency at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the Times that the response “indicates that ICE continues to feel increasing impunity” as an agency “exempt from accountability.”
“It is extremely implausible that ICE does not have any of this footage — it just strikes me as beyond the pale,” she added.
From The New York Times:
Neither ICE, in its letter, nor the Department of Homeland Security, in a response to questions from The New York Times, directly explained why the letter said there were no records of body camera footage even though administration lawyers had submitted such clips to Judge Ellis.
ICE’s letter implied that such records might be shielded, citing some exemptions to open records laws, including ones on national security, ongoing criminal investigations and information that can expose government informants’ identities. Ms. Weismann said the requested records did not qualify for such exemptions “under any reasonable interpretation.”
But in an emailed statement, the Homeland Security Department seemed to imply that such footage might not even exist, emphasizing the limits of the body camera requirements, saying they applied only to immigration agents who already had cameras and had been trained to use them.
I know I shouldn’t find anything these people do shocking at this point, but the fact that ICE has agents who don’t even know how to use a body camera running around the streets, detaining people, is horrifying, actually.
The Federal Records Act requires government agencies to preserve all documentation that officials and federal workers produce in the performance of their duties and to make nonexempt records publicly available under the Freedom of Information Act.
ICE’s response has only intensified concerns that the Trump administration is trying to avoid public oversight about its immigration crackdown. Throughout the year, the Department of Homeland Security has consistently refused to comply with public records laws.
In August, the Department denied a public records request related to the National Guard’s Los Angeles deployment. They said they stopped retaining text message data in early April and attributed the lack of data to no longer implementing software that automatically captured officials’ text messages, instead requiring officials to manually screenshot their texts.
That kind of sounds like they willfully complicated the process to ensure there’s little, if any, documentation revealing how they conduct their business. “They are trolling citizens and judges,” Harper told the Times regarding administration officials. “It indicates that ICE continues to feel increasing impunity and that it has the right to behave as a secret police that’s exempt from accountability.”
If and when this cursed regime comes to a close, I have a feeling that ICE is going to be hit with an ungodly amount of lawsuits. Hope that $50,000 signing bonus was worth it, y’all.
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