The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency isn’t spending its final weeks under the Trump administration releasing detained people—including children and their families—as an emergency health measure amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, but instead issuing a subpoena attempting to force BuzzFeed News to reveal its confidential sources. Priorities.
“The subpoena appears to be an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to track down the identities of people who provide information to news outlets,” BuzzFeed News said. The report further said that ICE demanded BuzzFeed News not “disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time.” To which the only fitting response is, LOL.
ICE is apparently pissed off over Hamed Aleaziz’s reporting on Trump administration plans, including a draconian policy that would let mass deportation officers all over the U.S. bypass the immigration court system entirely and quickly deport undocumented immigrants who can’t immediately prove they’ve lived in the U.S. for at least two years.
This is dangerous shit that everyone regardless of immigration status needs to be concerned over—and that ICE is clearly trying to keep as quiet as possible. The subpoena, issued by the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility, demands that BuzzFeed News reveal by Dec. 22 the internal documents obtained by the outlet, and who turned them over. In response, the BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief is telling ICE to shove it.
"BuzzFeed News emphatically rejects any requests for information about possible sources and methods of our reporting,” Mark Schoofs said in the report. “We do not confirm or discuss confidential sources, and this subpoena is an outrageous overreach by the federal government. It's fundamentally at odds with the US Constitution and will not have any impact on our journalism."
What’s astounding is that ICE is issuing this subpoena (as the Department of Homeland Security itself ignores legitimate congressional subpoenas) threatening First Amendment protections when it’s not just allowing the pandemic to burn through detention camps, but actively aiding it. Just days ago, a federal judge slammed the agency and a private prison profiteer for abhorrent conditions at a detention camp in California, saying that “[t]hese officials knew that they needed a clear and detailed plan to minimize the risk of an outbreak (and to contain an outbreak if one occurred), but nine months later they still have not created one.”
ICE is also refusing to release children and parents detained at migrant family jails, not just cruelly keeping them locked up as it seeks to deport them, but keeping them locked up as COVID-19 is also hitting one such detention camp in Texas.
“Eight individuals at Dilley, including parents and children, have now tested positive, including an eight-year-old child, according to Allison Herre, the managing attorney of Proyecto Dilley, a project that provides pro bono legal services to families detained at Dilley,” Prism’s Tina Vasquez reported this month. “The attorney explained that the setup of the family detention center makes it a prime location for the virus to spread because families are in close quarters.”
ICE has every power and ability to release all of these people today if it wanted to. Instead, it’s focusing on attacking press and respected reporters like Aleaziz for reporting the facts. “This is an attempt to intimidate the press,” Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Without courageous sources, we would only know what the administration wants us to know about ICE’s conduct and misconduct. ICE must withdraw this subpoena immediately.”