President Barack Obama shakes hands with Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in L’Aquila, Italy, on July 9, 2009. (AP photo/Michael Gottschalk)
(CNSNews.com) - Even as President Barack Obama continued the U.S. military intervention in Libya’s civil war--with armed Predator drones beginning patrols over that North African country on Thursday--U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing immigration laws, could not account for 10 Libyan men it had caught and released inside the United States since July 2009.
After two weeks of inquiries about the Libyans from CNSNews.com, ICE finally responded on Thursday afternoon that it had already released to CNSNews.com all the information that was “available” on these Libyans and that the agency had “nothing more to add on the matter.”
ICE describes itself as “the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the second largest investigative agency in the federal government.” It says its “primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration.”
The information about the unaccounted-for Libyans derives from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that CNSNews.com filed with ICE on Dec. 1, 2010. This FOIA request asked for records about non-Mexican foreign nationals processed by ICE in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.
On Jan. 28, 2011, ICE responded to the FOIA request by providing CNSNews.com with two Excel spreadsheets including information about 286,769 non-Mexican foreign nationals processed by the agency over the two years. One Excel spreadsheet contained information on 143,543 non-Mexican aliens processed by ICE in fiscal 2009, and another Excel spreadsheet contained information about 143,206 non-Mexican aliens processed by ICE in fiscal 2010.
The Excel spreadsheets did not include the names of the aliens, but did include eight columns of information about them. These columns included: 1) the “book in” date on which the alien had been detained, 2) the “book out” date on which the alien had been released from detention, 3) the ICE geographical “area of responsibility” in which the alien had been detained, 4) the alien’s "case status,” 5) the alien’s “case category,” 6) the alien’s date of birth, 7) the alien’s gender, and 8) the alien’s country of citizenship.
In all 286,769 cases, ICE had redacted the unnamed alien’s date of birth from the version of the database released to CNSNews.com citing the (b)(6) and (b)(7)(C) exemptions under FOIA. As ICE explained in a letter to CNSNews.com, these exemptions allow the government to withhold information from a FOIA response if releasing it would be an “unwarranted invasion of privacy.”
Generally, the spreadsheet entry for an alien detained by ICE included information in each of the other seven columns. For example, the first alien listed in the database is a 1) female, 2) Nicaraguan, 3) booked in by ICE on Oct. 29, 2008, 4) in the St. Paul, Minn. area of responsibility, 5) who was booked out on Nov. 19, 2008, 6) whose “case category” was “[8C] Excludable / Inadmissible--Administrative Final Order Issued,” and 7) whose “case status” was “8-Excluded/Removed--Inadmissibility.”
The spreadsheets also generally indicated when an alien had been granted some form of relief or given permanent resident status in the United States. For example, a Honduran man detained in the San Antonio area on April 8, 2009 and held in custody until Sept. 16, 2009, was marked as having a case category of “Excludable/Inadmissable,” but after his case was adjudicated by an immigration judge, his case status column was marked “L-Legalization--Permanent Residence Granted.”
