News Action Alert

FOIA SUIT THWARTED?

By February 5, 2005October 25th, 2018No Comments

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Immigration News Briefs

Vol. 8, No. 6 – February 5, 2005

On Jan. 11 Marie O’Rourke, assistant director of the Executive

Office for US Attorneys, informed the civil rights group People

for the American Way (PFAW) that the Department of Justice (DOJ)

would charge “approximately $372,799” to search for records the

group is seeking. PFAW filed its Freedom of Information Act

(FOIA) request in November 2003 for records involving “any

request by the government to seal the proceedings of a case in

any federal court arising from or relating to the detention of a

post 9/11 immigrant detainee.”

An “initial canvass of our 93 districts led to an estimate search

time of 13,314.25 hours,” billed at $28 an hour, O’Rourke told

PFAW general counsel Elliot Mincberg in a letter–adding that the

estimate could rise with the possible addition of “hundreds of

hours” more in search time for the Southern Florida district and

four other districts.

The letter came two days before the government was due to explain

to a federal court in Washington why PFAW’s lawsuit against the

DOJ should be summarily denied. PFAW sued last Aug. 23 after the

government first refused to release any records–citing federal

privacy exemptions–then denied an appeal. PFAW has until Feb. 10

to respond to the fee letter. The DOJ lawyers have asked US

District Judge John Bates to hold a hearing the week of Mar. 14.

PFAW hopes to produce a public report about government secrecy

efforts against hundreds of unidentified detainees–including

Algerian-born Florida restaurant waiter Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel,

detained in October 2001 for overstaying his student visa after

the FBI claimed he had served food to some of the men involved in

the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. Bellahouel filed a habeas

corpus petition (M.K.B. v. Warden) in January 2002 in the

Southern District of Florida; his case was kept secret and off

the court dockets on orders of US District Judge Paul Huck.

Bellahouel was freed around March 1, 2002, but continued to press

his habeas case in an attempt to challenge the secrecy order.

Bellahouel’s name was discovered and made public by the Daily

Business Review of Miami only because of a March 2003 clerk error

at the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta [see INB

1/3/04]. [Daily Business Review 1/31/05]

Immigration News Briefs (INB), a weekly English-language summary of US

immigration news, is forwarded out to the email list of the Coalition for

the Human Rights of Immigrants (CHRI). If you receive INB as a forwarded

message, and you wish to subscribe directly to INB, or to the CHRI email

list (which includes INB and local NYC area events, average 4-5 messages a

week), write to nicajg@panix.com (indicate “CHRI list” or “INB only”).