Fun with FOIA requests

[Jered]

Here's the text of an email I received from DHS.

This is in reply to your request to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Upon review of your FOIA request, it has been determined that your description is too vague. You have requested the number of I-192 criminal waivers that have been issued to ailens who are inadmissiable pursuant to INA 212(a)(2)(C) as controlled substance traffickers.

Please be advised Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Regulations require you to describe the records that you seek in enough detail to enable Departmental personnel to locate them with a resonable amount of effort. Whenever possible your request should include specific information about each record sought, such as the date, title or name, author, recipient, and subject matter of the record. See Title 6 C.F.R.§ 5.21(b).

Please narrow the scope of your request to include a specific period of time and location. This is not a denial of your requset. Upon receipt of a perfected request, you will be advised as to the status of your requst.

This message is to confirm your request submission to the FOIAonline application: View Request. Request information is as follows:

Tracking Number: CBP-2014-044867
Requester Name:
Date Submitted: 09/14/2014
Request Status: Submitted
Description: How many I-192 criminal waivers have been issued to aliens who are inadmissible pursuant to INA 212(a)(2)(C) as controlled substance traffickers. I am simply interested in the number of such waivers that have been issued because I am compiling data for a research project.

Basically, I asked for information about how many drug dealers that the let into the United States, so, it's something potentially very embarrassing for DHS. I don't think I'm asking for anything that falls into the FOIA exemptions because I'm asking for statistics about immigration documents that a subcomponent of DHS issues.

I also asked for information about sex offenders. They denied that FOIA request even faster. That information would be really embarrassing if they let it out of the bag, so, I'm not really surprised.

The person who wrote the denial letter is a remarkably illiterate chimp, though.

[Greg]

Were those career limiting requests?

[BobbyK]

I'm still waiting for the rejections from my last round of FOIA requests. I thought it would be amusing to get copies of my files from all the TLAs...

[Jered]

Were those career limiting requests?

No, they shouldn't be.

The funnier one is how fast they denied the one when I asked for information about waivers that they give to sex offenders.

[slowpoke]

see ifyou can find a managers report or briefing that would list them.

[Jered]

see ifyou can find a managers report or briefing that would list them.

I don't think they track the sex offender ones, but for the drug trafficker ones, that is a good idea.