Detention Watch Network v. United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement

215 F. Supp. 3d 256, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91929, 2016 WL 3926451
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedJuly 14, 2016
Docket14 Civ. 583 (LGS)
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 215 F. Supp. 3d 256 (Detention Watch Network v. United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Detention Watch Network v. United States Immigration & Customs Enforcement, 215 F. Supp. 3d 256, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91929, 2016 WL 3926451 (S.D.N.Y. 2016).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

Loma G. Schofield, United States District Judge

This Opinion address cross motions for partial summary judgment in a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) action, 5 U.S.C. § 552, et seq. Plaintiffs, the Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights, move for partial summary judgment seeking the release of documents and information showing unit prices, bed-day rates and staffing plans in government contracts with private detention facility contractors. Defendants, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), cross-move for partial summary judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56, asserting that the information is properly withheld under FOIA pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(4) (“Exemption 4”) and 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(E) (“Exemption 7(E)”). For the reasons stated below, Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment is granted. Exemptions 4 and 7(E) do not apply to unit prices, bed-day rates and staffing plans, and the information must be produced. Defendants’ cross-motion is denied.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The FOIA Request and “Unit Prices,” “Bed Day Rates” and “Staffing Plans”

Plaintiffs submitted a FOIA request to DHS and ICE on November 25, 2018, seeking a range of records related to the “Detention Bed Mandate,” which the Plaintiffs define as a policy, since 2007, of maintaining a certain numerical level of detention. The records sought include executed agreements and contract renewals between ICE or DHS and private companies regarding detention facilities or detention beds. Since at least 2009, Congress has appropriated money to ICE conditioned on maintaining 34,000 detention beds per day. The Detention Bed Mandate has been .the subject of significant public attention, including legislative efforts to eliminate the mandate. Plaintiffs, a nonprofit, public interest legal organization, and a national coalition of organizations and individuals working exclusively on detention and deportation issues, sought the records noting that the public concern about the Detention Bed Mandate has focused on the profits accruing to private prison corporations and the financial incentives that the Detention Bed Mandate creates for ICE to detain an increased number of non-citizens and suspected non-citizens.

The issue on these summary judgment motions is whether the Government may withhold information showing unit prices, “bed-day rates” and “staffing plans” in government contracts with private detention facility contractors. Contracts between private contractors and ICE contain the contractors’ pricing and staffing information for the services to be provided. The pricing can be provided as a fixed monthly amount based on housing an anticipated number of detainees, or as a “bed-day rate,” representing the contractor’s full cost of operating the facility divided by an expected number of detainees to be housed and the number of days, to arrive at a per-detainee, per-day rate. Many contracts also include staffing plans, which detail the number of personnel working at a particular detention facility, the number of per[260]*260sonnel assigned by shift, and how and where the personnel are posted within the facility. ICE has redacted the bed-day rates and fixed monthly rates from the contracts under Exemption 4, and has redacted the staffing plans under Exemptions 4 and 7(E) of FOIA. Plaintiffs challenge those redactions.

B. Relevant Procedural History

On January 30, 2014, Plaintiffs filed the Complaint in the instant action, and on February 11, 2014, a motion for preliminary injunction to compel DHS and ICE to search for and produce documents responsive to Plaintiffs’ FOIA request. At the time the Complaint and motion were filed, DHS and ICE had not produced any documents. By Order dated May 16, 2014, ICE and DHS were directed to produce the requested documents on a rolling basis. By Order dated July 3, 2014, ICE and DHS were required to meet monthly quotas in their document production.

When ICE produced contracts that ICE had executed with local governments and private contractors for the operation of immigration detention facilities, some information — including terms about unit prices, bed-day rates, and staffing plans— was withheld pursuant to FOIA Exemption 4, which protects commercial information that is privileged or confidential and obtained from a person. After Plaintiffs objected to the redactions, ICE conceded that it had improperly applied Exemption 4 to unit prices in contracts with public entities. Regarding contracts with private entities, ICE stated that it would obtain input from private contractors pursuant to DHS FOIA regulation 6 C.F.R. § 5.8 in deciding whether to release similar information from contracts with private contractors. ICE later informed Plaintiffs, in June 2016, that it would continue to invoke Exemption 4 to withhold unit pricing, bed-day rates, and staffing plans for private contracts.

Plaintiffs challenged these redactions and the parties negotiated a representative sample of documents relating to six contracts to be used for the present motions for partial summary judgment. The Government prepared a Vaughn index describing the agency’s rationale for the assertion of FOIA exemptions regarding those contracts, with the understanding that a ruling would apply to similar redac-tions in contracts that ICE has produced or will produce in connection with this litigation and other documents containing the same information. See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 827-28 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (requiring the Government to produce an itemized and indexed document outlining the Government’s justification for asserting FOIA exemptions).

II. LEGAL STANDARD

FOIA was enacted in 1966 to ensure public access to information by creating a judicially enforceable public right to obtain information from government agencies. See Milner v. Dep’t of Navy, 562 U.S. 562, 565, 131 S.Ct. 1259, 179 L.Ed.2d 268 (2011) (“Congress enacted FOIA to overhaul the public-disclosure section of the Administrative procedures Act ... [which had] gradually become more ‘a withholding statute than a disclosure statute.’”) (quoting EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 79, 93 S.Ct. 827, 35 L.Ed.2d 119 (1973)). By granting access to such information, the Act sought to promote “an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society, needed to check against corruption and to hold the governors accountable to the governed.” John Doe Agency v. John Doe Corp., 493 U.S. 146, 152, 110 S.Ct. 471, 107 L.Ed.2d 462 (1989) (quoting NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co.,

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215 F. Supp. 3d 256, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 91929, 2016 WL 3926451, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/detention-watch-network-v-united-states-immigration-customs-enforcement-nysd-2016.