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U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta threatened U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement with sanctions ahead of a hearing scheduled for
Wednesday afternoon if the agency doesn't "stop wasting everybody's time" with "unbelievable"
and "nonsense" redactions in a Freedom of Information Act suit.
The judge's words were recorded in a court transcript of last week's hearing published Tuesday by
the FOIA Project, a program of Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
TRAC's co-directors filed the present FOIA suit against ICE back in 2014.
Seven years later, Judge Mehta accused ICE of attempting to relitigate the case by disregarding
his order to produce a clear analysis of which data it could reasonably provide in response to
records requests without jeopardizing sensitive law enforcement information. Instead, he said ICE
had produced a "nonsense" report accompanied by conclusory declarations, according to the
transcript.
"It's as if nobody heard a word I had to say last time we were here. I am literally at a loss right
now. I am at a loss," the judge said. "I have never, in my judicial career, had an agency respond
to a judicial order in the way that ICE has responded to this order in this case
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