US judge blocks Sacramento TV station from getting immigration files in criminal case

A federal judge in Sacramento has rejected a television station's bid to gain the immigration files of a man facing terrorism charges.

KXTV, a Sacramento ABC affiliate, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for "all immigration files, photos, annotations and investigations compiled" on Omar Ameen. However, U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez ruled Friday the records fell under exemptions in the act. KXTV LLC dba ABC10 v. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 2:19-cv-00415-JAM-CKD (E.D. Cal., filed March 7, 2019).

Ameen is an Iraqi who was arrested in 2018 at his home on suspicion of being a member of the ISIS terrorist network and carrying out a murder in that country. He denies the charges and claims he will be murdered by the Iraqi government if he is extradited back to that country, as federal authorities are seeking to do in USA v. Ameen, 2:18-mj-00152-EFB (E.D. Cal., filed Aug. 14, 2018).

Federal immigration officials had earlier released some of the files the station sought but withheld others under exemptions protecting personal information and law enforcement investigations. Through his attorneys, Ameen at one point sought to intervene in the case to block further disclosure of his immigration files, though he later dropped this motion and provided some of the documents from his own records.

This left only three full pages and 26 partially redacted pages the federal government is still seeking to block. In his ruling, Mendez wrote the federal government had given sufficiently detailed reasons why the remaining documents should not be turned over.

"With FOIA's exemptions, 'Congress created a scheme of categorical exclusion; it did not invite a judicial weighing of the benefits and evils of disclosure on a case-by-case basis,'" Mendez wrote, citing FBI v. Abramson, 456 U.S. 615, 631 (1982).

-- Malcolm Maclachlan