Long v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2022)
Plaintiffs Susan B. Long and TRAC Reports, Inc., filed this Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to compel Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to produce records comprehensively identifying and describing the tables, fields, and codes in the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) and ICE Integrated Decision Support database (IIDS). The responsive information is the same information that the Court ordered ICE to produce in Long v. ICE, No. 14-109 (D.D.C.), but current as of the date of ICE’s search. ICE failed to produce a complete set of the requested information.
Both parties moved for summary judgment. Plaintiffs argued that ICE did not conduct an adequate search because it failed to query the EID and IIDS to extract the requested data, instead confining its search to an incomplete data repository called Matrix. Plaintiffs further argued that ICE failed to produce the ENFORCE table subset within the EID, did not produce plain-English translations of codes, redacted without justification information in the column titled “Technical Data type,” and conducted an inadequate search for code lookup tables because it used incomplete data dictionaries pulled from Matrix as a starting point for its search.
On March 30, 2026, the court denied the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment. The court held that ICE’s decision to search Matrix for the requested data dictionaries was reasonable, even though Matrix does not include all responsive records that are in the EID and IIDS. But the court found that ICE had not explained its (1) failure to produce the ENFORCE table subset; (2) failure to produce plain-English translations of codes; (3) redactions of information in the “Technical Data type” column; and (4) contradictory statements regarding whether it used the Matrix data dictionaries to inform its search for code lookup tables. The court ordered ICE to either provide supplemental declarations supporting the adequacy of its search with respect to these issues and justifying its withholdings, or to produce the information.