Southern Poverty Law Ctr. v. U.S. Dept., Homeland

359 F. Supp. 3d 1267
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Georgia
DecidedJuly 26, 2018
DocketCIVIL ACTION NO. 1:16-CV-2871-CAP
StatusPublished

This text of 359 F. Supp. 3d 1267 (Southern Poverty Law Ctr. v. U.S. Dept., Homeland) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Southern Poverty Law Ctr. v. U.S. Dept., Homeland, 359 F. Supp. 3d 1267 (N.D. Ga. 2018).

Opinion

CHARLES A. PANNELL, JR., United States District Judge

This action is before the court on the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment [Doc. No. 37]. The plaintiff brought this action pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. § 552, seeking injunctive and declaratory relief in relation to its request for agency records from the defendants.

I. Background

The plaintiff is seeking records pertaining to the defendants' immigration enforcement operations that occurred in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas on January 2 and 3, 2016. As a result of these operations, 121 individuals were taken into custody. On January 7, 2016, the plaintiff submitted an FOIA request to the defendants related to the operations. At the time of filing this suit, August 9, 2016, the defendants had produced no records and provided no substantive response to the FOIA request. On September 12, 2016, the defendants filed an answer admitting that no records had been turned over and stating that the request was still in process.

On October 13, 2016, this court issued a scheduling order setting forth a timeline for the defendants to turn over responsive records and provide a Vaughn index ( 32 C.F.R. § 701.39 ) [Doc. No. 11]. The parties jointly requested two amendments to the scheduling order, both of which were granted by the court [Doc. Nos. 14 and 16].

Pursuant to the court's scheduling order, the parties provided a status report on March 22, 2017. The status report indicated that the following issues remain for resolution:

(1) whether the defendants performed an adequate search of their records in response to the plaintiff's FOIA request;

(2) whether the exemptions claimed by the defendants are proper; and

(3) whether the plaintiff is entitled to an award of costs and reasonable attorney fees pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E).

[Doc. No. 18]. On April 7, 2017, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint in which it *1270added three paragraphs to Count I: violation of the Freedom of Information Act. These three paragraphs seem to acknowledge that some documents were turned over to the plaintiff by the defendants [Doc. No. 19 at ¶¶ 31-33].

The defendants filed a motion for summary judgment in which they argued that they satisfied all obligations with respect to the plaintiff's FOIA request. The plaintiff opposed the motion for summary judgment and contended that the defendants' searches were inadequate and not reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents. Also, the plaintiff argued that the defendants improperly withheld information in light of individual consent forms. This court denied the defendants' motion for summary judgment [Doc. No. 35] and ordered the defendant to turn over documents for which the plaintiff had obtained consent forms.

II. The Plaintiff's Motion

The plaintiff has now moved for summary judgment in which its seeks an order requiring the defendants to produce specific responsive records and conduct additional searches for responsive records [Doc. No. 37].

FOIA cases are generally handled on motions for summary judgment. Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida v. United States , 516 F.3d 1235, 1243 (11th Cir. 2008) ; Miscavige v. I.R.S. , 2 F.3d 366, 369 (11th Cir. 1993). Summary judgment should be granted where there exists "no genuine issue as to any material fact" and the moving party "is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(c).

A. Specific Documents

This court has already concluded that the absence of judicial or administrative warrants in the responsive documents coupled with the fact that "warrant" was not used as a search term demonstrated that the defendants' searches were inadequate [Doc. No. 35 at 7]. An additional deficiency found by the court in addressing the defendants' motion for summary judgment was the omission of Field Operations Worksheets and I-213 forms from targets arrested in Georgia and Texas.

These two deficiencies were enough for this court to deny the defendants' motion for summary judgment. The issues have been raised again in the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment. The plaintiff is seeking an order from this court requiring the defendants to produce "all judicial warrants, Forms I-200, I-205, and I-213, Field Operations Worksheets, work folders, and arrest folders prepared or resulting from Operation Border Resolve, related to individuals who were subject of the operation." The court agrees that the plaintiff is entitled to receive these documents. And to the extent that non-exempt portions of these documents are available for production, the defendants are ORDERED to produce them within 60 days of the date of this order.

The defendants seem to indicate, however, that these documents are not readily accessible to them because they are not "simply waiting in a file cabinet to be retrieved and produced." [Doc. No. 41 at 13]. Therefore, the defendants will be required to conduct additional searches that, at a minimum, contain the search term "warrant."1

*1271B. Parameters of Additional Searches

The parties agree that for a document search in response to an FOIA request to be adequate, it must be reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents. Ray v. U.S. Dep't of Justice , 908 F.2d 1549, 1558 (11th Cir. 1990). The defendants repeatedly cite cases holding that a document search need not be exhaustive and that failure to uncover every document does not indicate an inadequate search. See Lee v. United States Attorney for S. Dist. of Fla. , 289 F. App'x 377, 380 (11th Cir. 2008) ; SafeCard Servs., Inc. v. S.E.C. ,

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Bluebook (online)
359 F. Supp. 3d 1267, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/southern-poverty-law-ctr-v-us-dept-homeland-gand-2018.