Question
I want to ask for some guidelines about the law (I am not sure if it is a law or not) that protects the names of illegal immigrants that are convicted in the U.S. of violent crimes. I want to have guidelines about which one is the story here, I want to know why this is different between illegal immigrants and American Citizens? I know that the names of American citizens are part of the public record. Can you tell me is this is a law? If so, when was it passed?
Answer
You may be referring to a decision by the decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in CEI Washington Bureau Inc. v. United States of America Department of Justice, 404 F. Supp. 2d 172 (D.D.C. 2005). This case related to a request filed by an organization under the federal Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) for information including the names of alien inmates in a database system maintained by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (“BJA”) in conjunction with a federal program called the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program.
This program involves payments from the federal government to states and localities that have incurred correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating certain undocumented criminal aliens.The court decided that the BJA was justified in withholding names and other individually identifying information from the system pursuant to FOIA exemption (b)(6) (exempting “personnel and medical files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”) and (b)(7)(C) (exempting “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information…could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”). 5 U.S.C. Sections 552(b)(6), 552(b)(7)(C).This decision is based on the specific set of facts that underlie it, and it does not necessarily represent a different treatment of the names of U.S. citizens and the names of illegal aliens.
Asked & Answered posts should not be relied on as legal advice, and FAC makes no guarantees about their completeness or accuracy. All posts carry a date of publication that readers should take note of in assessing their usefulness, given that laws and interpretations of them may change over time. Posts predating Jan. 1, 2023, that discuss the California Public Records Act may contain statute numbers no longer in use. Please see this page for a table showing how the California Public Records Act has been renumbered.