Second Circuit: ICE must decode its documents

MANHATTAN — The Second Circuit reversed a finding in favor of Immigration and Customs and Employment on the ACLU’s FOIA request for spreadsheet data on the five stages used by ICE in enforcement and deportation. The Circuit ruled that the ACLU’s request, for ICE to replace exempt non-resident ID numbers with anonymous identifiers, does not amount to a request for new records but instead is a request for ICE to decode the “key” to which only it was privy to, effectively denying public access to the records.