Access to Records About Immigration Detention

In 2019 the ACLU of Michigan brought a lawsuit under the Michigan Freedom of Information Act after Calhoun County refused to respond to a request for records about the detention of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez, a U.S. citizen who was held illegally in immigration detention at the Calhoun County Jail. The trial court dismissed the case based on an obscure federal regulation that the county said prohibited the public from seeing all local records about people held for ICE. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed in a ruling that would have made it almost impossible to obtain information about immigration detention in Michigan. In February 2022 a unanimous Michigan Supreme Court reversed, holding that immigration detention records are not exempt from disclosure under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. After the case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings, Calhoun County produced the requested records. (ACLU of Michigan v. Calhoun County; ACLU Attorneys Miriam Aukerman, Dan Korobkin, Monica Andrade, Elaine Lewis, and Ramis Wadood; Cooperating Attorneys Merrick Wayne, Joshua Burday, and Matthew Topic of Loevy & Loevy.)