The American Civil Liberties Union is racing against the clock to stop the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency from erasing countless documents on detention records, including records from the first year of the Trump administration.
In an interview with Newsweek, ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Eunice Cho said the civil liberties union would be filing a sweeping Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to preserve and obtain ICE records that could soon be erased thanks to a recent ruling from the National Archives and Records Administration.
On December 11, 2019, the Archivist of the United States approved a request from ICE that was initially proposed on October 2, 2015, under the Obama administration, to delete detention records from past years.
Among the records that stand to be deleted, Cho said, are documents related to the deaths of detainees, allegations of sexual assault and allegations of abuse of detainees in ICE custody, including from those held in solitary confinement.
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Article URL : https://www.newsweek.com/aclu-races-stop-ice-deleting-years-records-including-data-detainee-deaths-sexual-assault-1487755