Justice Deferred
The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse of the University of Michigan Law School has compiled abstracts of sixty-three lawsuits brought against the Trump Administration under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on immigration policies alone . In each case, plaintiffs asserted the government failed to honor record requests in compliance with the act and that none of the nine exemptions and exclusions under the act applied. In American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security , for example, the ACLU submitted an FOIA request to Homeland Security regarding its use of G45 Secure Solutions, a private contractor, to detain and transport immigrants without due process. The ACLU was investigating numerous reports of violence against detainees by G45 personnel, including a 2014 instance in which a detainee died. The purpose of the request was to determine how the government selected such contractors and awarded contracts totaling more than $20...