A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to search for — and turn over — more documents related to a planned immigration detention facility in Scarborough.
The ruling caps a two year legal fight between the federal agency and the ACLU of Maine and other immigrant advocacy groups, who first filed suit against ICE in 2021, trying to force the agency to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request.
Carol Garvan, legal director with the ACLU of Maine, praised the court ruling, and said it will help shed light on what she calls basic questions about how ICE plans to use the detention facility.
"Things like, 'How many people will be detained in these facilities? How long will they be detained? What will be the basic purpose of these facilities?'" she said.
Garvan added it's not even clear if ICE is using the facility yet.
"And so that's another sort of layer of [...] the lack of information that we have or that the public has about what the status is of this facility," she said.
Garvan said her group will meet with ICE's representatives as soon as this week to determine a schedule for the agency to find and turn over additional documents. ICE could not immediately be reached for comment.
