On August 23, 2018, Muslim Advocates filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the United States Department of Justice [DOJ] and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. The complaint alleged that the defendants improperly withheld information in violation of the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], 5 U.S.C. § 552(a), and sought declaratory and injunctive relief. Muslim Advocates had requested information from both defendants regarding Operation Janus, where the DOJ, in conjunction with other agencies, reviewed the files of naturalized citizens and began intensive denaturalization efforts. In-house counsel along with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP represented the plaintiff.

The plaintiff had requested information from both defendants on January 11, 2018. The Civil Division of the DOJ denied the request in full on January 19, 2018, claiming that the release of the documents would be "reasonably expected" to interfere with law enforcement. The DOJ did not explain their reasoning for this determination. The plaintiff then requested a Vaughn index, in which the government provides an itemized index of withheld documents and justification for doing so. The DOJ did not respond to this request. On February 9, 2018, ICE informed the plaintiff that the scope of the request was too broad, and thus did not process the FOIA request. Even after the plaintiff amended its request for information on several occasions, ICE did not release any of the requested documents.

The case was assigned to Judge Rudolph Contreras.

Status reports indicate that the parties reached an agreement on all FOIA issues on January 13, 2020; that agreement has not yet been publicized. Negotiations over ICE's payment of plaintiff's attorneys fees are ongoing as of June 9, 2020; the next status report is due June 15, 2020.

Elizabeth Heise - 06/09/2020


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