On the 60th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), federal agencies routinely delay, redact, or ignore public records requests, undermining democratic transparency. While the law specifies a 20-day response window, agencies like ICE often take years to reply, forcing advocates to pursue expensive litigation to get answers. To restore the law's original intent, Congress must implement concrete accountability measures, such as per-day penalties and limits on discretionary exemptions, to dismantle the culture of government secrecy.
**THE DAILY INQUIRER**
*SPECIAL EDITION — PRICE TWO CENTS*
### **THE GREAT WASHINGTON RUN-AROUND!**
#### **UNCLE SAM’S HUSH-HUSH SQUAD FLIMS THE PUBLIC!**
**Four-Year Delay for a Scrap of Paper! G-Men and Bureaucrats Mock the Law While Crying Citizens Demand the Truth!**
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**WASHINGTON, D.C.** — It was the dead of winter, December 1920—pardon, December 2020—when this scribe sent a polite missive to the big brass at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that high-and-mighty agency they call "ICE." Under the grand laws of this Republic, those federal fellas have exactly twenty business days to cough up the goods.
But did they? Tell it to Sweeney!
It wasn’t until the dawn of January 2025—a whopping four calendar years later—that the postman finally delivered their reply. And what did these tax-eating bureaucrats have to say for themselves? A load of old malarkey!
*“Before we start this awfully tiresome chore,”* their boilerplate telegram whined, *“we want to make sure you’re still breathing and still want the papers.”* Talk about the old run-around!
#### **SIXTY YEARS OF THE BIG HUSH**
This coming Saturday, Uncle Sam celebrates his grand 250th birthday. But there’s another jubilee on the docket, folks—the diamond-adjacent 60th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, the grandest tool we’ve got for keeping the fat-cats in Washington honest.
Back on the Fourth of July, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson put his John Hancock on the bill, though he did so with cold feet, muttering about “national security” and “privacy” like a nervous bank guard. Today, that noble law is on life support, choked out by a parade of administrations, both elephant and donkey alike.
For fifteen long years, this reporter has been down in the trenches with the Center for Constitutional Rights, battling a veritable alphabet soup of government gumshoes—ICE, the FBI, DHS, and the DOD. And let me tell you, sister, those boys don’t give you the time of day unless you drag ’em by their lapels straight into a court of law!
Now, we ain’t talking about chasing little green men from Mars or snooping into the grassy knoll. No, sir! The Open Records Project is serious business. We’re talking about helping desperate folks get immigration files for their kin locked in federal hoosegows. We’re talking about shedding some light on the fancy electronic-eye surveillance the Border Patrol uses to watch the border, and standing up for the rights of transgender folks targeted by modern-day witch hunts.
#### **THE SLICK TRICKS OF THE G-MEN**
But the federal flatfoots have a million slick tricks to keep the curtain drawn. They’ll play dumb and never write back, or they’ll slap you with a form letter claiming your request is "too broad"—a real high-hat brush-off. And if they do hand over the papers? They’ll ink ’em out so bad they look like a crossword puzzle!
Get a load of this bunk: we asked how many medics were working at an immigration detention camp, and the feds blacked out the numbers, claiming some high-binder might use that info to take hostages! Baloney!
Or how about the big shot who ran the ICE outfit in Chicago? This swell “lost” a whole vault of emails because he copied them onto a busted gizmo called an external hard drive—years after he was supposed to hand them over to us.
To get justice, an ordinary citizen has to hire a high-priced mouthpiece, costing thousands of smackers. And those federal judges? They fold like cheap accordions, deferring to the brass and building a mountain of legal mumbo-jumbo to keep the public in the dark.
#### **LEGAL EAGLES DEMAND A CLEAN-UP!**
It was Congress that forced the executive branch to play square in the first place, and it’s up to the boys on Capitol Hill to do it again. But don’t give us any of that modern hokum about "Artificial Intelligence" or dumping more greenbacks into the already bloated pockets of the Defense Department.
We talked to some of the sharpest legal minds in the business to find out how to beat these desk-jockeys at their own game:
* **Amber Qureshi**, a smart-as-a-whip attorney from Maryland, says if the feds miss their deadline, the judge should strip them of their power to hide "discretionary" secrets. *"Stop ’em from hiding behind loopholes, and they’ll whistle a different tune,"* she tells us.
* **Andrew Free**, a legal hawk and investigative ink-slinger out of Georgia, wants to hit ’em where it hurts—the pocketbook! *"Congress ought to slap a daily cash fine on any agency that drags its feet,"* he says, noting that Washington state and New Mexico already use those brass-tacks rules to keep their local pols in line.
Furthermore, we’ve got to banish the "Glomar" dodge—that slick routine where an agency says they can "neither confirm nor deny" they even have the goods. And why not set up a watchdog agency with real teeth, just like they have in New York, to keep these bureaucrats on the straight and narrow?
#### **WE WON’T BE COWED!**
Just the other day, a government lawyer tried to scare us off, howling that our latest inquiry was so big it would “shut down the government!” Don’t make me laugh! We won't be intimidated by their cheap theatrics.
Sixty years ago, old LBJ said he signed this law because *"the United States is an open society in which the people’s right to know is cherished and guarded."* Well, the big-wigs in Washington don't cherish it no more, and the boys on Capitol Hill aren't guarding it either.
As the Trump administration pulls out all the stops to cover its tracks and hide its rackets, we need the honest politicians left in the capital to put some spine into this law. The public has a right to know, and it's time to bust this trust of secrecy wide open!