Transparency Project

The National Immigrant Justice Center’s Transparency Project uses federal Freedom of Information Act and local open records laws to combat secrecy and expose systemic abuse in the U.S. immigration detention and enforcement system.

The project works to shed light on the largest immigration detention system in the world, and demand accountability from agencies that violate human rights and recklessly spend billions in taxpayer dollars every year.

ICE detention contracts and inspections

Since 2015, NIJC’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation has resulted in the most comprehensive public release to date of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center contracts and inspections. The thousands of pages of documents provide an unprecedented look into an extraordinarily abusive system that lacks accountability, shields ICE from public scrutiny, and allows local governments and private prison companies to brazenly maximize profits at the expense of basic human rights.

Read the contracts and inspections documents and NIJC’s reporting and analysis

Laws and policies that criminalize migration

NIJC has filed a number of FOIA requests to shed light on the use of the criminal legal system to criminalize people who come to the United States without authorization. This includes Sections 1325 and 1326 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code, which make it a federal crime to enter or reenter the United States after a deportation or removal order without proper authorization; so-called “Consequence Delivery” systems that administrations have employed to deter asylum seekers from traveling to the United States; and other policies that dehumanize migrants and often result in family separations.