FOIA Advisor

FOIA News: Immigration judges compromised by inadequate redactions

Allan BlutsteinComment

The DOJ Accidentally Doxxed These Immigration Judges

The Department of Justice thought it had adequately redacted the names of immigration judges involved in complaints in a recent response to a FOIA request. It didn’t, and now it might be sued.

By Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, Jan. 24, 2017

In the final days of the Obama administration, an immigration attorney based in Long Island made a remarkable discovery: that the Justice Department accidentally doxxed some of its most powerful employees.

The mistake has implications for a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the department is embroiled in, and it could get the DOJ sued by judges it employs. On top of that, it also has the potential to change the way we think about how the government decides who gets deported.

This mistake happened in early 2015, when the Justice Department released a trove of heavily redacted documents on complaints filed with the department about immigration judges.

Read more here.