© 2024 WEMU
Serving Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, MI
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Supreme Court says detainee records subject to FOIA

TSM
Calhoun County Jail

The Michigan Supreme Court has ruled the Calhoun County jail must divulge records related to a detention on behalf of the federal immigration agency. Rick Pluta reports.

The court said records related to Calhoun County’s three-day detention of Jilmar Ramos-Gomez are not exempt from Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. The sheriff’s office tried to shield the records because Ramos-Gomez was held on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The decision was unanimous.

“A regulation cannot serve as the basis for exempting from disclosure public records,” the opinion said, “… because a regulation is not a statute.”

The court said federal rules adopted by an agency don’t preempt Michigan laws, including the state’s Freedom of Information Act.

“If the Legislature wanted a regulation to be a basis for exemption, it would have included language to that effect,” the court ruled. “But it did not, and we interpret the statute as written.”

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s department could not be reached.

The lawsuit was filed in 2019 by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Supreme Court overruled two lower courts.

“It’s taken three years, a trip to the Michigan Supreme Court, but the court said those records are not exempt,” ACLU attorney Miriam Aukermantold Michigan Public Radio. “It a real victory for public access to information. We cannot hold our government accountable if we do not know what our government is up to.”

Aukerman said the decision should also clear the way for the release of records in another Calhoun County case. The ACLU is also trying to get records related to the jailhouse death last year of Jesse Jerome Dean, another ICE detainee.

“Things that happen behind bars, if we can’t find out about them, that’s a really dangerous place to be,” she said.

The Supreme Court opinion can be found here.

Non-commercial, fact based reporting is made possible by your financial support.  Make your donation to WEMU todayto keep your community NPR station thriving.

Like 89.1 WEMU on Facebook and follow us on Twitter

— Rick Pluta is the Managing Editor and Reporter for the Michigan Public Radio network.  Contact WEMU News at734.487.3363 or email us at studio@wemu.org