Afternoon light shines on the sign for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center in El Centro, Calif., on May 27, 2022. (Stock photo by Matt Gush/Getty Images)
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio is suing a second county, accusing it of violating the state’s open-records law.
The records are contracts and memoranda between the Seneca County Sheriff’s Office and federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Marshal’s Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
As with some other counties in Ohio, Seneca has contracted with the federal government to detain those swept up in the Trump administration’s mass deportations. The ACLU filed a similar suit against Geauga County in May.
Seneca County is claiming that it’s not allowed to release the records because they “are federal records subject to the Federal Records Act (FRA) and thus not subject to disclosure under state law,” according to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU.
However, open-records laws are intended to combat corruption and other secret dealing by giving the public access to the inner workings of government. As a general matter, government documents can usually only be withheld or redacted if they contain sensitive personal information, business secrets, would compromise a law enforcement investigation or if their disclosure would endanger public safety or national security.
“The Seneca County Sheriff’s Office has a clear legal duty to provide the requested information,” Freda Levenson, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, said in a written statement. “The sheriff’s office has never denied that they possess such records, and there is no provision in Ohio public records law that exempts them from the obligation to produce these records.”
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Levenson also said the federal statutes cited by the sheriff’s office don’t exempt the information from disclosure.
“The public has a right to this information,” the statement continued. “Local law enforcement must be accountable; it cannot shroud itself in secrecy.”
The sheriff’s office didn’t immediately respond to a message sent Tuesday afternoon.
Advocates for immigrants have argued that jails are not appropriate places to hold people detained by ICE. For one thing, many — those not accused of illegal entry — are not criminal suspects. For another, there were lawsuits and other problems at Ohio jails under the arrangements during the first Trump administration.
Lynn Tramonte, founder of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, in April listed the harms done to those held in county jails on immigration matters. Such detentions mean “taking them away from their families, jobs, and communities, making them rot in jail, while their immigration cases are pending. Making it harder for them to work with lawyers and win their cases. In the United States, you can be eligible for deportation and legal status at the same time.”
The ACLU of Ohio is asking the state Supreme Court to issue an order mandating that the records it asked for be released. Jocelyn Rosnick, its chief policy and advocacy officer, said sheriffs have to be accountable under state law.
“The ACLU of Ohio is deeply committed to protecting immigrants’ rights and our organization serves as a watchdog for government transparency and accountability,” she said. “Ohio counties like Seneca and Geauga cannot hide behind federal immigration officials to avoid obligations under Ohio law. Our lawful demands for timely and accurate information must not be ignored.”
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