Judge denies Berkeley law professor’s request to compel ICE records

(CN) – A federal judge in San Francisco sideways with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to disputes brought by a UC Berkeley law professor seeking detention and deportation records from the agency.

Professor David Hausman initially filed a Freedom of Information Act request with ICE, requesting 14 years of enforcement data on an expedited basis. After the agency denied the request, Hausman sued and submitted a request for one preliminary injunctionseeking to compel the court to order the agency to comply with his request within eight days.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin denied the motion, citing a clear lack of imminent and irreparable harm that Hausman would face without emergency relief. Courts considering preliminary injunctions in the FOIA context should focus their attention on the timing of the information and whether or not it can become stale, she wrote.

“Here, Hausman argues that the requested data is necessary to inform the public debate about rapidly changing immigration enforcement policy,” nominee Biden wrote. “At this stage and on this record, the value of the last few pieces of information sought can hardly be overstated.”

Hausman, who directs Deportation Data Project with his colleagues, looked for tables that report on patterns in ICE enforcement actionscourt records show. They include anonymous records showing arrests, detentions and removals, among other things, that can help researchers track outcomes as each person moves through the system.

Hausman and his colleagues first requested the data last September.

“The tables thus promote public scrutiny of government conduct, ensuring greater accountability and disclosure of violations of the law, including constitutional violations, during a period of significant public debate about ICE,” the judge wrote. “Indeed, information from the boards has been used to show ICE’s violations of its own rules governing the use of holding facilities only for short-term detention — leading courts and local governments to take action against illegal uses of such facilities.”

However, Martinez-Olguin refused to grant Hausman’s motion to compel the records under one preliminary injunction.

“Although the records may help identify constitutional violations or other forms of harm, ICE’s failure to secure the records does not itself constitute irreparable harm absent a proximate event that would impair the value of the records.” the judge wrote. “Moreover, Hausman cannot allege that imminent harm would result if his requested preliminary injunction is not granted given the scope of his requested relief. Hausman has not demonstrated that he would suffer imminent harm if his request for over 14 years of historical data is not granted on an urgent basis.”

Hausman did not identify a specific imminent or time-bound event after which the value of the spreadsheet data would diminish, she continued.

Although Hausman argued that the data would become stale if not expedited, he did not allege an injury other than his desire to contribute to the national discourse about immigration and failed to show how the multi-year extension of his request would lose its value, Martinez-Olguin concluded.

In a statement to Courthouse News, Hausman vowed to continue his efforts to seek the release of the eviction records.

“ICE owes the public timely information about its arrests, detentions and deportations,” he wrote. “The Deportation Data Project has obtained and posted this information six times since 2025, and each time we have posted the data for free on deportationdata.org. We will continue to request regular updates on this information.”

The Deportation Data Project is a research initiative that analyzes and publishes ICE data mainly through FOIA Requests in an effort to make deportation records more accessible to the public.

Neither ICE nor DOJ immediately responded to requests for comment.