Federal Court Rejects Prison Firm Akima Global Services Intervenor Motion, Orders ICE Contracts Released

Last week Federal Judge Harry Leinenweber of the Northern District of Illinois smacked down a private prison firm's effort to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement from releasing documents that Akima Global Services, LLC claimed contained proprietary information. The order of April 19, 2017 is part of ongoing litigation to procure information about how the private prison firms profit from the unlawful exploitation of those in their custody under deportation laws.

The passage most meaningful to me was the judge's response to Akima's invocation of deference ICE has shown to its previous redaction requests: 

AGS’s next argument is that ICE, by failing to exempt the Krome Contract, was changing its position that the Krome contract was exempt, and an agency must supply a “reasoned analysis” for such a new policy, citing Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital v. Sebelius, 698 F.3d 536, 555 (7th Cir. 2012). However, as ICE pointed out, the previous “decision” was not a formal decision of the agency itself but was an informal ruling made by an employee. Apparently there was no objection to the redaction made by the requester so no formal agency review was undertaken. Such an informal decision made by an employee would not be authoritative, unlike the decision at issue here, which resulted from a full agency review. (pp. 12-13)

Such a finding supports the importance of "forensic intelligence," that is, the largely untapped possibilities for scholarship that thwarts injustice by eliciting information the government does not release unless the public objects to the deference given corporate elites and agency cronies.

from Miami News Time investigative article

Akima runs a large facility in Miami, where the local media have highlighted ongoing abuse. Documents for the Krome facility I downloaded from a FedBizOpps website for the 2012 bid - reproduced in the appendix to this law review article  - reveal that Akima's kitchen operation is staffed by 30 people in its custody it pays one dollar per day and just six people employed from outside the facility. This violates a number of federal laws on labor and government contracts. Like similar facilities with ICE contracts, Akima fulfills virtually all its obligations to the government, save those of actual guard duties, by forcing those in its custody to work for slaving wages or no pay at all.

In the 29 months since Andrew Free, the brilliant civil rights attorney who represents me in FOIA litigation, filed the complaint, ICE has released thousands of pages of documents that I have discussed in my scholarship and on which journalists have reported, including the death by electrocution of Cesar Gonzalez after his jackhammer struck a powerline and sent 10,000 volts of direct current through his body. That said, we continue to battle to force ICE to remove the hundreds if not thousands of unjustified redactions, and to release dozens of documents still withheld in their entirety. (To support this work, please go here, or send funds directly to Attorney Free.)

Mother Jones and the Washington Post have covered the successful class action litigation underway against the GEO Corporation in Aurora, Colorado. For the orders in the Menocal lawsuit and the primary source documents obtained in our litigation, , please go here.