National Immigration Project v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Case No. 1:26-cv-01544-AHA
Summary
The Laken Riley Act, passed in January 2025, dramatically expanded the government’s ability to detain noncitizens without the chance to argue for release on bond while their immigration cases are pending. How ICE decides who the law applies to—including whether it reaches people who were already placed in removal proceedings before the law passed—can mean the difference between staying with family while a case moves forward and sitting in detention for months. ICE has never made its internal rules for applying the law public.
The National Immigration Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking ICE to turn over the policies, memos, and training materials describing how the agency interprets the law’s detention requirements. ICE said it searched a single internal office and found nothing responsive. When the National Immigration Project appealed, arguing that other ICE offices, including the ones that write enforcement guidance and train officers, were far more likely to hold the records, ICE agreed a broader search was warranted and sent the request back for re-processing. It never followed up, missing the deadline FOIA sets for a response.
The National Immigration Project sued to make ICE follow through: conduct an adequate search, turn over the records, and waive the processing fees given the organization’s nonprofit, public-interest purpose in seeking them. At stake is whether the public gets to see the rules ICE itself is using to decide who stays locked up under a major new detention law.