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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, NOvEmbER 20, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
Circulation manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production manager
CARL EARL
Systems manager
OUR VIEW
ICE dodges legitimate questions
A
government agency that
acts too highfalutin to pro-
vide citizens with straight
answers is a risk to democracy. Inde-
pendents, progressives and conser-
vatives should all be united in fight-
ing unjustified government secrecy.
A desire by some bureaucracies
to hide their actions isn’t uncom-
mon. However, from one presiden-
tial administration to the next, U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforce-
ment shows a particularly dismis-
sive disdain for citizen oversight.
Its highhanded secrecy and unac-
countability certainly plunged to
new depths during President Don-
ald Trump’s term, but it was far from
adequate under President George W.
Bush and President Barack Obama.
It continues its haughty ways under
President Joe Biden.
Too used to treating undocu-
mented immigrants as things to be
hunted, ICE appears to also think
citizens are inconsequential, to the
extent that it considers itself effec-
tively beyond the reach of the Free-
dom of Information Act. This
self-sabotage of its own credibility is
doubly hurtful, since few Americans
dispute the agency’s central impor-
tance in ensuring rational compli-
ance with validly enacted immigra-
tion laws.
A notorious scofflaw when it
comes to FOIA, ICE has faced
numerous lawsuits on the subject,
including one by the University of
Washington. And in 2018, ICE and
Cowlitz County took the unprece-
dented step of suing UW’s Center
for Human Rights “for seeking the
lawful release of information” about
a program that detained undocu-
mented youths.
This region’s close-up view
of ICE activities is well known.
In 2006, in an example predat-
ing Trump, other federal agencies
assisted ICE in detaining 16 work-
ers at a Chinook seafood plant. But
things really came to a head in 2017,
when ICE mounted a full-scale
Associated Press
IT WOuLd bE AN uNFORTuNATE
EXAGGERATION TO CLAIm, AS SOmE dO,
THAT ICE OPERATES AS A FORm OF SECRET
POLICE WITH INAdEQuATE OvERSIGHT
INSIdE u.S. bORdERS. buT IT RISKS
AddITIONAL dAmAGE TO ITS ALREAdy
TARNISHEd REPuTATION by LEGALISTICALLy
dOdGING LEGITImATE QuESTIONS POSEd
FOR vALId NEWSGATHERING PuRPOSES.
safari in Pacific County, Washing-
ton, in ways that garnered cover-
age in the Chinook Observer, Seat-
tle Times, New York Times and
BBC. These reports relied on inter-
views with affected immigrants —
at least until ICE tactics intimidated
them into silence. At the same time,
the Chinook Observer sought details
from ICE itself — efforts that were
invariably ignored or addressed in
only the most superficial ways.
On March 1, 2019, the Observer’s
Alyssa Evans made a fresh effort via
FOIA to pry information from the
agency. It took ICE until October to
respond, a lapse of more than 2 1/2
years. The request was simple: A list
of all individuals arrested or detained
by ICE within Pacific County since
Jan. 1, 2008, what city they were
arrested in, and the day and time
they were arrested. In its egregiously
delayed response, ICE declined to
provide any of this information.
ICE cites various purported
exceptions to the FOIA law to
explain its decision, which the news-
paper is appealing. One of these
justifications seems at least nomi-
nally defensible, while others will
strike most people as shallow and
spurious.
Releasing detainees’ names, it
claims, would be “a clearly unwar-
ranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Admittedly, having your name dis-
closed could embarrass an ICE
detainee. But such delicacy isn’t an
issue for federal and state prisons,
or for county jails, where inmates’
names are openly available even
before conviction. Any privacy right
would seem to be counterbalanced
by a detainee’s interest in not being
confined and deported in secrecy.
Having the names is essential in
attempting to discover what became
of detainees, locating family mem-
bers, seeing whether detainees cycle
in and out of custody and the coun-
try, and learning whether they have
been convicted of non-immigra-
tion-related crimes.
ICE refuses to release the dates
and times of arrests, alleging that
doing so would compromise future
immigration enforcement efforts by
revealing “techniques and/or pro-
cedures” or “disclose guidelines for
law enforcement investigations.”
ICE claims “the techniques and pro-
cedures at issue are not well known
to the public.” More understandably,
it says it can’t break out an individ-
ual county’s arrests since they are
lumped within the larger Seattle
Office of Enforcement and Removal
Operations, which apparently covers
all of Washington state and Oregon.
It is difficult to see how learn-
ing apprehension dates and times
would harm enforcement efforts, the
patterns of which are well known
within the immigrant community
and by the wider public. Getting this
information will tell all of us how
the emphasis on local immigrants
changes between presidential admin-
istrations, along with newswor-
thy insights about whether people
are detained singly or in the course
of larger raids that might sweep up
many people.
Learning in which jurisdiction
immigrants are arrested will provide
an idea about where ICE expends
its efforts, which appear to wax and
wane with little obvious reason.
It would be an unfortunate exag-
geration to claim, as some do, that
ICE operates as a form of secret
police with inadequate oversight
inside U.S. borders. But it risks addi-
tional damage to its already tar-
nished reputation by legalistically
dodging legitimate questions posed
for valid newsgathering purposes.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Appreciation
I
’m writing to express my appreciation
for the Warrenton-Hammond School
District bus drivers. They regularly yield
their right of way, and wave me on to
make a left from S.W. Ninth Street onto S.
Main Avenue, a congested intersection at
7:42 a.m. on school days.
I’m continually grateful each and every
time. Thank you!
LAUREN MALLETT
Warrenton
Begging
W
hen The Astorian becomes depen-
dent upon governmental aid to keep
its jobs, its integrity is compromised. The
writer of “A light on our democracy”
(Nov. 13) notes that this is not about the
government putting its hand on certain
types of speech. Really!
The questions remain: Why does The
Astorian need to beg the government for
tax credits? What will The Astorian owe
the government for that gift? How will it
be able to investigate governmental cor-
ruption? Who will be the next generation
of journalists, government employees?
Newspapers, and all media, need to be
independent of government strings. They
need to be free to investigate lies and cor-
ruption without bias. Is not the EO Media
Group capable of that without begging for
governmental handouts?
ROBERT LIDDYCOAT
Seaside
Mainstream
H
ow do you suppose the “mainstream”
media got to be mainstream? In our
consumer-driven society, it’s because, over
time, they proved themselves to be reliable
sources of true reporting of facts, and the
voice of thoughtful, useful opinions.
In my youth I worked for the State
Department, in communications, and held
a top-secret “crypto” security clearance.
And, I was constantly amazed how con-
sistently right-on the mainstream Ameri-
can and “Western” media of the day — the
TV networks and the Associated Press and
Time and Newsweek and Life magazines,
etc. — were, in their analyses of foreign
affairs and current events, including Cold
War military matters.
Because all they had to do was ask
themselves, in each situation, what was in
the best interest of the people of the U.S.,
and presume that was the position of the
U.S. government.
That simple formula was uncan-
nily accurate. Not perfectly, but almost.
Because the people who worked in our
government were dedicated to that princi-
ple. There were, and still are thousands of
them, and they stand tall.
I believe that holds true today, despite
the best efforts of Steve Bannon and Ste-
phen Miller and former President Donald
Trump and their boot-lickers and lackeys
at Fox News to subvert, distort and negate
all of that.
On Veterans Day, I celebrate those vets
who didn’t, and don’t wear uniforms, as
well as those who did, and do.
JOSEPH WEBB
Astoria