FOIA Report Comms
| Tracking # |
2023-HQFO-01174 |
| Submitted | March 8, 2023 |
| Due | April 5, 2023 |
| Est. Completion | April 27, 2024 |
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Communications
From: Andrew Free
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
Records maintained or received by the DHS Chief FOIA Officer’s office regarding that office’s failure to meet the March 1, 2023, deadline for posting the statutorily mandated Chief FOIA Officer Annual Report in 2023.
Description of Records Sought - 6 C.F.R. 5.3(b)
Please task the search with the following parameters:
Records Systems to Search: (1) Emails (2) Calendar Entries
Time period: February 1, 2023 - March 8, 2023.
Custodians: DHS Chief FOIA Officer & any subordinate officials or contractors responsible for complying with FOIA’s annual reporting requirements.
Search Terms: “Chief FOIA Officer Annual Report!” “March 1” “5 USC 552(e)!” and “FOIA /s Annual Report!”
(Note: the “!” Indicates responsive records would include all forms of the word attached to the !; Note: /s means “within the same sentence as” or “within 50 words of”)
Background
We make this request pursuant to the statutory authority at 5 USC 552(a)(3), and also as end-users of the statutorily mandated government records DHS has failed to timely release. DHS’s Chief FOIA Officer was required by law to complete and transmit to the Attorney General and the Office of Government Information Services its FY22 Chief FOIA Officer Annual report by February 1, 2023. 5 U.S.C. 552(e)(1). This report should have been made available for inspection by the public in electronic format. 5 USC 552(e)(3). DHS was supposed to ensure the Attorney General could link this report for public inspection by electronic means no later than March 1, 2023. 5 USC 552(e)(4)
The last two required acts have not happened as of today, as reflected by DOJ’s page - https://www.justice.gov/oip/reports-1 and DHS’s page: https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-chief-foia-officer-reports. Indeed, since 2011 DHS has *never* published its Chief FOIA Officer Annual Report by March 1, according to the agency’s own website. Refusing public access to this basic, statutorily required information is a means of depriving FOIA requesters of information Congress determined was necessary to ensure the Act is functioning, and agencies are not serially violating the law. Failure to disclose this information undermines public trust in the agency and compromises claims that it can be presumed to operate within its statutory limits. It further raises serious questions of government misfeasance, given that the Chief FOIA Officer of the agency is apparently unable to timely discharge a specific non-negotiable duty imposed by the Congress specifically on that officer.
Please:
1. Acknowledge this request within the statutorily required period of 10 days and assign it an individualized tracking number.
2. Make a determination within 20 working days of whether the agency intends to comply with this request.
3. Notify us of the estimated date on which the agency intends to comply, or issue a timely, written denial if no compliance can be expected.
4. Make all reasonably segregable, non-exempt portions of the requested records promptly available.
5. Cease violation of 5 USC 552(e)(1)-(3) and post the FY22 Chief FOIA Officer Report for the Department of Homeland Security without further delay.
6. Assign this request to the Simple track.
Thank you,
Andrew Free
#DetentionKills Transparency Initiative
Al Otro Lado
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on March 9, 2023. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on March 9, 2023. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response. You had assigned it reference number #2023-HQFO-01174.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Department of Homeland Security
"Good Morning,
Attached is our acknowledgment of your DHS FOIA request. If you need to contact this office again concerning your request, please provide the DHS reference number.
This will enable us to quickly retrieve the information you are seeking and reduce our response time. This office can be reached at 866-431-0486.
Regards,
Privacy Office
Department of Homeland Security
2707 Martin Luther King Jr. AVE SE
Mail Stop 0655
Washington, DC 20528-065
Phone: 202-343-1743 or 866-431-0486
Fax: 202-343-4011
E-mail: foia@hq.dhs.gov
Visit our FOIA website https://www.dhs.gov/foia"
From: Department of Homeland Security
"Good afternoon,
Thanks for reaching out to this office. We appreciate your frustration with the delay in our ability to respond to your request and apologize that we are not able to give you a more precise estimate of when you can expect to receive our response. At this time, our general expectation is that we will be able to send you a final response in the next three to four months.
Please understand that our office handles a very large volume of requests – in one month we respond to more requests on average than most Departments receive in a year. In addition to handling a large volume of requests, we are also responsible for processing a variety of particularly sensitive types of records. We have a responsibility to ensure that we carefully review all of the records we process to ensure that we provide maximum transparency while withholding any exempt material that could foreseeably cause harm to a protected interest. This is a labor-intensive task that involves working with offices to ensure that any potentially responsive materials are provided to us and then conducting a page-by-page and line-by-line review of all responsive records.
OCIO has provided us with potentially responsive records and your request has been added to our processing queue. It is very difficult to provide an accurate estimated date of completion until our FOIA analyst reviews these records for responsiveness and we have a better sense of the number of pages and the sensitivity of the material. The Privacy Office is also processing numerous FOIA Requests related to COVID-19; many of these requesters asked and qualified for expedited processing, meaning that they are required to be placed at the front of the queue. Again, our general expectation is that we will be able to send you a final response within three to four months. Please know that this estimate may change dramatically based on the volume of work associated with our expedited COVID-19 requests and on the types of records that OCIO has provided us for your request. Regardless of the specificity of your request, we cannot accurately estimate the amount of time it will take to process the records until we understand both the volume and sensitivity of the records.
While we make every effort to be responsive to requesters and hope to be able to respond to you sooner, there may be additional delays.
I hope that this response provides additional insight into why we are not able to give you a more precise estimated date of completion, and why we expect it will take three to four months for us to respond to your request.
While we are sure this is not the response you hoped for, we hope that this information is useful to you. Please let us know if you need any additional assistance.
Regards,
Privacy Office
Department of Homeland Security
2707 Martin Luther King Jr. AVE SE
Mail Stop 0655
Washington, DC 20528-065
Phone: 202-343-1743 or 866-431-0486
Fax: 202-343-4011
E-mail: foia@hq.dhs.gov
Visit our FOIA website https://www.dhs.gov/foia"
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I'm following up on the following Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on March 9, 2023. You had previously indicated that it would be completed on April 27, 2024. I wanted to check on the status of my request, and to see if there was a new estimated completion date. You had assigned it reference number #2023-HQFO-01174.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Department of Homeland Security
"Good morning,
Your request is pending records preparation. It is very difficult to provide an accurate estimated date of completion until our FOIA analyst reviews these records for responsiveness and we have a better sense of the number of pages and the sensitivity of the material. Our general expectation is that we will be able to send you a final response within 6 months. Please know that this estimate may change dramatically based on the volume of work associated with our expedited requests and on the types of records that were provided to us for your request. Regardless of the specificity of your request, we cannot accurately estimate the amount of time it will take to process the record until we understand both the volume and sensitivity of the records.
Regards,
DHS Privacy"
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