ACLU of Florida and CREW File Federal Lawsuit Against ICE and NARA

The ACLU of Florida and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a federal complaint against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the National Archives and Records Administration.

A copy of the complaint can be found here.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants unlawfully destroyed surveillance video files from Glades County Detention Center (“Glades”), a county jail in Moore Haven, Florida, that contracts with ICE to hold persons in immigration detention.

Additional information on the case is found in CREW’s web page, which explains:

Glades is destroying video footage that could be used to substantiate reports of abuse against immigrants detained at the jail. The detention center is currently the target of multiple federal inquiries and civil rights complaints due to human rights abuses and conditions so inhumane that eight members of Congress have called on the Biden Administration to terminate ICE’s contract with the facility.

“The deletion of surveillance footage at Glades is the latest example of ICE’s appalling failure to follow and uphold critical recordkeeping laws,” said CREW Senior Counsel Nikhel Sus. “It is shameful that ICE appears to be comfortable with keeping the public in the dark about abuses taking place in one of its detention centers. ICE and NARA must intervene as legally required, and if Glades continues to break the law, ICE must terminate its contract with the center.”

“The practice of deleting footage at Glades violates federal requirements and actively obstructs key evidence that is pivotal to ensuring Glades County and ICE officials are accountable for their actions,” said Katie Blankenship, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Florida. “These problems are systemic and longstanding, and if history has proven anything, Glades County will likely continue to fail to address these issues and meet federal requirements. If that proves true, then a court must compel Glades to follow these critical protocols, and the facility must finally be shut down.”

The deletion of security footage at Glades is not the only example of ICE’s attempts to skirt recordkeeping laws. In 2019, ICE obtained permission from the National Archives to destroy years’ worth of sexual assault and death investigation records from ICE facilities across the country—a plan later blocked by a federal judge following a lawsuit filed by CREW.

IE