Last month, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice denied MuckRock a fee waiver for a public records request regarding immigration policy, stating that the TDCJ “does not waive fees for this type of request.” Last year, TDCJ made the same argument to justify a cost estimates of over one million dollars for records related to sexual assault in prison. This begs the question - what type of requests do TDCJ waive fees for?

We’ve filed requests with privately-run prisons and immigration detention centers in Harvey’s path to find out how they weathered the storm.

Our request for investigations of sexual assault in Texas correctional facilities since 2013 returned a price tag of $1,132,024.30 from the Department of Criminal Justice, which says there are more than 260,000 pages of responsive documents that would require more than 61,000 hours to process.