Info about ICE jailings hard to get
Staff writer
Despite laws requiring speedy responses, open record requests submitted by the Marion County Record last week have thus far been ignored by the Chase County Detention Center and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The requests concern the detention of Pittsburg resident Rosmery Alvarado and a contract between the for-profit detention center and ICE.
According to Alvarado’s daughter, Alvarado was detained by ICE after arriving for an interview in Kansas City.
She was told the interview would begin the process of her obtaining a green card as a legal resident.
Instead, Alvarado was put in a white van and taken to Chase County Detention Center, where she was held for seven days.
The daughter said Alvarado then was taken to South Louisiana Correctional Center, and likely deported Sunday.
South Louisiana Correctional Center would not share information about any inmate who was held there, despite ICE’s online assurance that “if you need information about a detainee that is housed at this facility, you may call.”
South Louisiana suggested calling a local ICE office, which did not pick up the phone.
Chase County Detention Center has been contracted by ICE to hold suspected illegal immigrants since 2008.
As of April 30, 119 of 143 Chase County inmates were classified as “deportable aliens” on the jail’s online roster.
Such inmates are mostly from Latin America, but a handful hail from other countries.
Vietnam, Sudan, Romania, and Pakistan are all represented inside the jail’s confines.
A Kansas Reflector article reported that the detention center received $62 a day in 2021 to house a detainee.
Two Record open-record requests sought to determine how much the center presently receives from ICE, as well as the current whereabouts of Alvarado and other information pursuant to her case.
When the request was put to the detention center, the Record was told: “Requests about immigration can be forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security at ice-foia@ice.dhs.gov.”
Emails sent to that address, which is repeated on the ICE website as a place to send open records requests, were bounced as undeliverable.
The detention center was reminded that as a unit of Kansas government, it is legally obligated to share the contract or state a reason why they could not within three business days.
The center has not responded.
Contacting ICE was similarly difficult.
The agency’s website suggests Kansas-related information can be attained through the email chicago.outreach@ice.dhs.gov.
But emails to that address also bounced.
ICE encourages the public to file public records requests using a third-party service called SecureRelease, with the caveat that they are “experiencing a high volume of FOIA requests” and “thank you for your patience.”
SecureRelease is a product of the accounting firm Deloitte.
Since 2022, it has served as a go-between for records requests for 10 different federal departments, including ICE.
A request made using SecureRelease on Friday has not yet been addressed.