Posted on 04/19/2019 4:08:48 PM PDT by zeestephen
The Center for Immigration Studies filed a lawsuit this week against U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the agency to comply with the Center's August 13, 2018, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. CBP failed to comply with the time limit set forth in federal statute with respect to the FOIA request for information that would allow the Center to assess the potential security threat at U.S. borders.
(Excerpt) Read more at cis.org ...
CIS is center-right, and exclusively does basic research and analysis on immigration policy.
Judicial Watch is a Conservative attack dog on the Russia Hoax and Deep State Corruption, but Trump still makes JW sue his Administration for almost every document they ask for.
The FOIA process literally takes years sometimes, even when the information is helpful to Trump or the GOP.
Since Trump frequently quotes Judicial Watch in his Tweets, he can't plead ignorance of what JW has to go through just to acquire the relevant documents.
Around 30 years ago I was involved in an IRS court case. There was a clear abuse by both the auditor and their appeals. After an appeal they agreed with me and dropped it.
Then for pure meanness the appeals supervisor overturned his employee. I appealed to tax court and filed a FOIA request. They rejected my request saying that I couldn’t use that as a substitute for discovery.
I did some research and discovered just how powerful FOIA request was. I got the entire file including an embarrassing note from an employee begging them to stop my request.
Somehow it got moved to regular Federal court. I did not have an attorney but the U.S. Attorney phoned me, joked a little and told me they were dropping it.
Re: The U.S. Attorney phoned me, joked a little and told me they were dropping it.
Nice.
You don’t often hear about “happy endings” in Tax court.
Why do you assume CBP is ignoring them? There are a lot of reasons they could have missed the deadline.
I know of one that took 14 years.
But by law, government organizations must respond to a FOIA request with a denial or grant of access within 20 business days.
They may drag their feet getting it redacted, declassified or located, as noted above...
NICE!
Re: “Why do you assume CBP is ignoring them? There are a lot of reasons they could have missed the deadline.”
Because the FOIA request was made 8 months ago, and CBP is required to make a determination - comply or not comply - within 20 business days.
CBP has had no contact with CIS for 8 months.
All of Trump’s Cabinet Secretaries follow the same plan - do nothing until a federal court intervenes - then, do nothing until a federal court threatens a contempt charge - then, do as little as possible to avoid the contempt charge.
Trump could stop this Deep State BS with a phone call - but he never does.
I would still like to hear what the other side has to say before I assume intent one way or another.
So would zeestephen and Judicial Watch.
For the last two years, Tom Fitton, president of JW, has been publicly and politely asking why Trump and his Cabinet Secretaries do absolutely nothing to facilitate the release of documents.
Trump's response?
Complete silence.
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