When ICE won’t respond, local records help expose immigration enforcement
By Jake Wittich
When federal immigration agencies withhold records, public accountability reporting becomes significantly harder.
Journalists have adapted by filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with local agencies to uncover enforcement activity when federal agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) refuse to release information. Records held by police departments, dispatch centers and city offices — from arrest reports to emails — have helped reporters fill in the transparency gap.
That shift was the focus of the Investigative Project on Race & Equity’s latest training, on FOIA strategies for immigration enforcement reporting, led by Jim Daley, investigations editor at South Side Weekly.
Turning away from ICE and toward city systems
Although ICE and DHS are legally subject to FOIA, Daley told participants that federal immigration agencies frequently stall, reject or ignore requests.
“ICE FOIAs barely go anywhere,” Daley said. “That’s just the reality reporters are up against.”
Columbia Journalism Review reported that in 2025, one nonprofit filed 137 FOIA requests with ICE and only received one substantive response – after seven months.
Some newsrooms have resorted to litigation.
Block Club Chicago sued ICE in federal court earlier this year after the agency failed to release records about immigration arrests.
To maintain accountability coverage, journalists are increasingly turning to local agencies.
Because ICE operations often intersect with police departments and city offices, local agencies can hold documents showing what federal agents are doing, including activities the federal agencies are trying to keep under wraps.
Dispatch systems and police records revealed ICE activity in real time
Some of the most impactful reporting on immigration enforcement in Chicago has come from public records held by local dispatch and police agencies.
Those records have included 911 and Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) dispatch logs, coordination emails, arrest reports, surveillance camera footage and even calendars or communications of elected officials.
In South Side Weekly’s “June 4 Calls Show CPD Knew Federal Immigration Agents Were Asking for Help,” Daley used OEMC and CPD dispatch call logs to confirm that ICE had requested coordination and assistance from Chicago police during an operation, which was information that ICE had never released.
A similar approach grounded Daley’s South Side Weekly investigation “911 Audio Shows South Shore Residents’ Panic During ICE Raid.”
While ICE provided no public details about the October FBI, ICE and Border Patrol raid of a South Shore apartment building, 911 logs and dispatch audio captured residents’ eyewitness reports.
“We got back calls with residents calling 911 to say what’s going on and to describe what was happening,” Daley said. “And then also I got audio from CPD and OEMC where they were discussing the fact that Border Patrol had called a station in the Fourth District to have them come pick somebody up.”
Local public records can also influence not only what the public knows about enforcement, but how it is understood.
In South Side Weekly’s “Migrant Shelter Residents Were Disproportionately Arrested for Domestic Violence,” one reporter analyzed CPD arrest and charging data to reveal a pattern of policing inside shelters for newly arrived immigrants.
Although the story was not about ICE enforcement directly, it used the same public-records strategies to expose how government systems were treating migrant communities, shifting the focus from individual behaviors and towards systemic failures.
Across these stories, public records were used as a starting point for a key finding to anchor an investigation.
“A lot of the time when you’re looking for a galaxy of documents and you don’t know all the people who’ve been affected, if you can find one case and home in on that real close, you can figure out all the documents that you want to look for elsewhere too,” Daley said.
Managing realistic timelines
The localized strategy expands what journalists can document about ICE, but it comes with challenges. Local agencies can still delay producing records, cite “unduly burdensome” exemptions, deliver heavy redactions or return conflicting records across departments.
“You can’t build a whole story around something that might arrive someday,” Daley said. “You have to assume FOIAs won’t come back in time and make sure the reporting can keep moving.”
Daley encouraged journalists to expect ICE refusals from the outset and to maintain flexible timelines.
He recommended FOIAing multiple agencies at once so one can compare redactions and fill gaps when no single department will release everything.
Daley also encouraged documenting every request, response and denial so that if future litigation becomes necessary, reporters have a structured appeal at hand.
“FOIA is one of the most powerful tools we have to show how enforcement actually affects people’s lives,” Daley said. “Even when the government doesn’t want people to see what’s happening, the records exist somewhere — and it’s our job to find them.”