New Haven Independent

The ruling, issued by Judge Mark Kravitz in New Haven’s U.S. District Court, comes in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, filed by Yale Law students on behalf of JUNTA for Progressive Action and Unidad Latina en Acción.

The suit concerns immigration raids that began on June 6, 2007 in Fair Haven, less than two days after the city passed its immigrant-friendly ID plan. The groups seek records regarding the planning of the raids and any agency correspondence mentioning the municipal ID program.

Since the suit was filed in the summer of 2007, ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) has been slowly releasing records — including one email in which one ICE agent applauds another on the raids, writing, “Good job showing a set of balls.”

Though it has released some records, ICE “has been dragging its feet for over a year now” to produce the rest, said Hunter Smith, a Yale Law student working on the case.

Kravitz ruled Monday to allow JUNTA and ULA to take depositions from federal immigration officials who arranged and conducted the raids. (Click here for his decision.)

JUNTA and ULA will be allowed to pose questions, under oath, to Richard McCaffrey, the ICE agent from Hartford who planned, organized and led the raids and Catrina Pavlik-Keenan, an ICE employee who is responsible for processing FOIA requests, Smith said. The plaintiffs will only be allowed to ask questions about records relating to the raids and the ID cards, Smith said. The depositions will be set up no later than February 5, 2009, according to the decision.

“Loading Up The Amistad With Illegal Aliens”

Meanwhile, ICE on Friday released another email in response to the FOIA case.

This email is from John Marley, one of two ICE prosecutors working on a deportation case in Hartford of 17 people arrested in the immigration raids.

The note is dated May 21, 2007, prior to the raids and passage of the ID. In it, Marley forwards a colleague a clip from an AP story describing how Yale Law School had vowed to defend the city against any challenge to the municipal ID.

“If you read below you will see that Yale is loading up the Amistad with illegal aliens and sailing them to freedom…” the note reads in part. (Click here to read it.)

Smith argued that the note is another example of how ICE was “actively concerned about the New Haven municipal ID” while planning for the June 6 raid.

The email shows that “ICE Hartford seems to look at the whole affair as just a game,” Smith said Monday. The agency “seems to be oblivious of the fact that people’s lives are at stake in this matter.”