Okay, DHS: Let’s do narrow

The Department of Homeland Security rejected my request for still-secret information on this summer’s immigration crisis as being “too broad.”  Fine.  We can address that.

When I filed my FOIA request one month ago on behalf of PowerTalk 1210 for information about this summer’s immigration crisis, I didn’t for one second expect it to be successful.  By stonewalling reporters at press conferences, the government had already signaled its degree of willingness to answer questions about how many migrants it had put on buses, how much money it had spent on plane rides for them, how many illegal immigrants actually did check in with immigration authorities at their final destination as instructed, and so on. 

Further, DHS put its attitude toward the media on its sleeve when it established a press office with a secret phone number, telling reporters to hit the keyboard, not the phone, with their questions.  (I’m channeling Bill Lumbergh, the suspender-wearing, coffee-sipping exec in the movie Office Space, here:  “Yeah....  Just go ahead and contact us by email.  That would be terrific.  Okay?”)

So I knew the effort was doomed.  But, since I’m channeling movie characters here, as Dr. Emmett Brown put it in Back to the Future when contemplating an action that could lead to negative results:  “Well, I figured, what the hell?”

So it did it.  And I wasn’t surprised when, six weeks later, the gummint sent me a “final disposition” notice giving me the bum’s rush.  Still, the excuse the bureaucrats handed me for the stiff-arm got my blood up.  They said my request was too broad.  Again, not a surprise, precisely.   I had indeed cast a wide net.  Requests I’ve filed in the past to state and local agencies, worded in a similarly broad fashion, have produced results for me.  But never mind.   I expected DHS to seize on any excuse, and it was not a shock that its media handlers had found that one handy. 

Still and all, though, the excuse presented a challenge.   DHS wants to do narrow?  Okay, let’s do narrow.

This morning I broke up the request into tinier parts and tried again.   I filed 40 new requests.  You read right.  Forty.  Ten times four.  Three dozen plus four.  One score and ten.  Your two hands, flashed four times.  Three new Freedom of Information Act requests to replace the previous three, plus 37 new ones.   (And by the way, did I mention that one of those previous three to date has failed to elicit any response of any kind?  But I digress.)

Yes, I was a busy boy.  And unlike last time, no one can reasonably claim that any of the requests is a duplicate.

Here’s what I did.  First I went down the published list of leaders at the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the Office of the Border Patrol.  I filed requests targeted to these ten individuals:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

Department of Homeland Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

Department of Homeland Chief of Staff, Christian P. Marrone

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas S. Winkowski

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Daniel Ragsdale

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Chief of Staff Leonard Joseph

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske

Customs and Border Protection Acting Deputy Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan

Customs and Border Protection Acting Chief of Staff Rene Hanna

Chief of the Border Patrol Michael J. Fisher

I directed four requests to each of those ten individuals, seeking:

-- Any correspondence or report, in electronic or print form, authored by the individual and sent to any individual on the subject of, or pertaining to the subject of, illegal immigration across the southern Border of the United States, in the month of July 2014.

-- Any correspondence or report, in electronic or print form, authored by the individual and sent to any individual on the subject of, or pertaining to the subject of, illegal immigration across the southern Border of the United States, in the month of August 2014.

-- Any correspondence or report, in electronic or print form, sent to the individual by any author on the subject of, or pertaining to the subject of, illegal immigration across the southern Border of the United States, in the month of July 2014.

-- Any correspondence or report, in electronic or print form, sent to the individual by any author on the subject of, or pertaining to the subject of, illegal immigration across the southern Border of the United States, in the month of August 2014.

Are these still too broad?

None of the forty individual requests is as broad as, for instance, what Congress has been demanding regarding the IRS persecution of conservative political groups.  And in the course of my centuries (okay, three decades) of experience in TV news, I have sent requests worded much more broadly than these to local officials in Tucson and other communities, and have achieved good results.   Remember when Pima Community College was initially refusing to divulge any records at all about Jared Lee Loughner, the madman who shot all those people in 2011, on the grounds that federal law protected his privacy?  When a judge removed that excuse, the college granted the public records requests and wound up releasing every document it possessed containing Loughner’s name—by any author, sent to any author, on any date, on any subject.  My station received 22,000 pages of documents.   That was a broad public records request.  But we got the documents.

Two years earlier, I filed a series of requests on a local school district whose board president was a on a mission to keep the public in the dark about a certain matter my station was investigating.  The district administrators could have dug in their heels and claimed the requests were overbroad, or that they were protected by this exemption or that exemption, or whatever.  They didn’t.  We wound up with several thousands of pages of public records in that case, and as a result were able to get to the bottom of the story we were investigating and present those facts to the public.   See?  Some public officials do get it.  They understand what democracy in our country is all about, how it works, and their role in making it work.

Likewise, the federal government could choose to cooperate if it so desires.  President Obama’s stated policy, posted in writing on the White House website, urges government bureaucrats to do so and sets the expectation that they will, promising, and demanding, a spirit of openness, transparency, and collaboration.

However, DHS, ICE, CPB and OBP do have the tools on hand allowing them to deny most requests, even those tailored as specifically as the ones I just filed.  My rejection letter yesterday offered to reconsider my request should I be able to “perfect” it with information such as:  “the date, title or name, author, recipient, and subject matter of the record.”  The advisory posted on CPB’s FOIA web page is even more picky.  It suggests providing “dates, times, officer names if available, certificate numbers, type of document, entry numbers, etc.”

Obviously, if a requester had all that info he or she would also have the document.  To get the information I requested will require the cooperative and collaborative spirit the President has promised us.  It’s a spirit I have almost always found at the local and state level.   Care to lay odds as to whether PowerTalk 1210 will experience that same level of cooperation—in service of our democratic way of life—from the feds?

Here’s one possible hint at the true regard the government has for its citizens in matters such as this:  When filling out the FOIA requests via the website DHS has set up for that purpose, I was amused to note that there was no special treatment or regard for U.S. residents.  For each form, I had to fill out my address, including country.  And every time I had to fill out my country, the form forced me to choose from a drop-down list showing every country on planet Earth, starting with Afghanistan.  It was a long scroll.  A U.S. government agency couldn’t have put the United States at the top of its country list, as domestic commercial websites do?  Apparently not.  What, you think living here makes you special when dealing with the U.S. government?  Who do you think you are?

I don’t know if that says anything about whether I’ll get a response or not, or how long it might take.  Let’s take a moment to stare at my email in box together.  Nope, I don’t see anything.   Hmm.  Let’s wait a few minutes.

While we’re at it, let’s take a moment to stare at my cell phone together.  Yesterday’s rejection letter invited me to contact the FOIA office by phone.  Yippee!  An actual phone number!  Hooray for our side!  But, the number only led to a voice mail greeting (of course) which then presented me the option of leaving messages in two different offices.   So I left two messages.   Here we are, 24 hours later.  Let’s check.  No, the phone isn’t ringing.  No missed calls, either.  No voice mails. 

Let’s watch a bit longer.

Nope, still nothing.

You can go about your business.  I’ll keep watching both, and will let you know.

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Related:   Radio Skit--The Department of Homeland Security Press Room

©2014 by Forrest Carr.  All rights reserved.