We’re teaching everyone how to use FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act.)
If you missed our first attempt to FOIA ICE and the General Services Administration for information concerning 800 Corporate Boulevard in the Town of Newburgh, start here.
This conversation picks up from that post.
The current deadline for GSA to get back to us, according to them, is 20 business days from July 13th, 2026. So August 7th, 2026 is when we will file up with them if we haven’t heard back.
Transcript
(Note: The following transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)
BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Lauren, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself?
Lauren Harper, Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation: Of course. My name is Lauren Harper, and I currently serve as the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy with Freedom of the Press Foundation. Prior to that, I spent over a decade working for a nonprofit based in Washington, DC called the National Security Archive, helping journalists, researchers, and lots of other folks use FOIA to get important documents declassified.
BJ Mendelson: For for our younger members of the audience, could you tell us who Daniel Ellisberg was?
Lauren Harper: Absolutely. Daniel Ellsberg was the legendary whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the early nineteen seventies, and these papers proved that successive presidential administrations, both Democratic and Republican, had been lying to the public and to Congress about the odds of success …American success, in Vietnam.
BJ: It’s striking to me. I I had just read The Afghanistan Papers a few years ago and I was struck by history not necessarily repeating, but definitely rhyming there.
Lauren: Craig Whitlock’s book relied heavily on FOIA. I actually worked on the Afghanistan documentation project at the archive while he was was working on that and, absolutely, history repeats, rhymes, all that stuff.
And FOIA, you know, is it’s an imperfect tool, but it was really important in getting …especially the Special Inspector General on Afghanistan Reconstruction Reports out into the public for for that book.
BJ: For people who haven’t read it, I can’t recommend [the book] enough. Especially as a millennial, my entire adulthood was shaped by Afghanistan.
Lauren, let’s put aside for a second that the federal government is broken, right? And FOIA probably is not gonna work the way that it would in an ideal situation.
That said, what we’re trying to do at The Monroe Gazette is train people to use the chat models like like a Claude or ChatGPT to send in FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.
And that can be fraught with peril.
What worked and what didn’t in that FOIA?
Lauren: I’ll just note that FOIA certainly does not work the way it was promised under this administration or really any other. You know, it’s had a lot of longstanding problems that have really snowballed over the decades and years, but I think it’s facing some acute pressure that is unique under this administration.
So long standing problems and acute pressures right now make it a really difficult tool. But I don’t want that to discourage people from using FOIA because I think it remains the best avenue any member of the public has in forcing the government to disclose information that the public wants to see. It’s one of the most democratic tools that we have access to. And I think the more people who use it shows the government that one, there’s a demand for actual transparency and there’s a need for this law, which makes it more difficult I think for the government basically to starve FOIA offices across the board.
But in terms of the request that you sent me, there are a couple things that that Claude did really well.
And I think in general, you know, AI does pretty well when it comes to helping people craft a FOIA request objectively.
You know, one of the things that it is best at is identifying what kind of documents an agency possesses. So AI can be really useful. And I think it was in this case for highlighting specific kinds of records that the GSA (General Services Administration) is likely to keep because you know the GSA has different kinds of records and a different record system than any other agency.
You know, it’s got a different record system than ICE, different kind of records, etc. It can also be really helpful in identifying specific dates, award numbers, amounts, and these are all keywords that can be used by a FOIA officer when they receive your request to help process it.
So I think overall that is what Claude is best at and did best here.
But I think that there are a couple of things… It was almost too good.
For example, you know, the request is really big. It’s got four parts. And objectively, that’s okay. But when it comes to how an agency actually processes a request, it might be better to split that up into four smaller requests.
And I’m happy to talk about some of the other things that you could input into the Claude model to make it a stronger request.
BJ: I wanted to briefly touch on how I relied Project Saltbox and their coverage of 800 Corporate Boulevard. They are the ones that initially had discovered this, I guess, secret intended use for the warehouse of possible transportation and holding of people there.
And so I relied heavily on feeding that information into Claude, which is what generated the FOIA.
In general, would you say it’s best practices to keep these FOIA requests as specific and narrow as possible?
And if so, does that lead into… What you mentioned of instead of like one big request, it it should be maybe more specific, more narrow and smaller requests?
Lauren: I think in general it’s always been best to file a targeted request as targeted as you can. And I think, you know, while a lot of there were a lot of specifics in the request that that you posted.
It really it different sections of it lend itself to an agency coming back with specific exemptions.
So if your goal is to, for example, have the simplest processing possible, like if you’re not gonna sue, that’s when it really behooves you to break up some of those requests.
So for example, one section most likely to get met with trade secrets exemption, the exemption before.
Another one was most likely to see what’s called “the
deliberative process exemption.” So if you’re not going to sue, really the best thing to do is to break up that request to a little bit smaller.
And that also allows you to preemptively kind of argue against some of the exemptions that might be applied. But I think for the average person perhaps who might be listening when filing your request, the best thing that you can do truly to put yourself on good footing Is not just the content of the stuff that you’re asking for, but make sure that you identify your fee status in the body of the request.
I noticed that yours asked for a fee waiver, which honestly is something I’m on the fence about because it’s so rarely granted. [Reader note: At this time the GSA has said our request for a fee waiver is “pending.”]
An agency will often come back and deny it. And it just kind of becomes another interaction you have to have with an agency before they process your request. What I’ve found, what a lot of particularly reporters, journalists, whether they’re freelancers or not, researchers at educational institutions and so on, their best bet is to preemptively identify their fee status.
For example, that could be news media. And what happens here, because of amendments that were made to FOIA in 2016, this means that when an agency misses their processing deadline of 20 days, which they most certainly will, or an extra 10 days, even if you do get expedited processing, they can’t charge any fees. And so that’s eff effectively the same thing as a fee waiver, but it doesn’t really require a back and forth with the agency usually to secure it. So I think asking for a fee status is is knowing your fee status and asking for it up front, one of the best things you can do to make the FOIA process less painful and contentious.
BJ: I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their local media. I think that’s great advice. And for us, what we’re trying to do is train people to be their own local media outlets so essentially everything within a ten mile radius of your home is what we’re encouraging people to report on.
In that specific instance, what what could they claim, if anything?
Lauren: I think you could say freelancer. I think you could say freelancer, which is member of the news media. You can pick the news media option when you file your request. That was another thing with your article. I think it mentioned either emailing or sending a hard copy of your FOIA request. You certainly can do that. You’re allowed to do that. What I recommend though, honestly, is going through GSA’s PAL portal, public access link portal. Because any other way that you submit a request, whether that’s you’re emailing it, you are mailing it in, or you’re using FOIA.gov, which is the government-wide FOIA portal, when the GSA gets it through any of those venues, they have to manually take all that information and put it into their their PAL portal. So that just creates another step. Sometimes errors can come in when an agency an agency FOIA officer is re-entering information into their direct portal. I would recommend just going directly into their their PAL portal. It keeps all of your correspondences with an agency right there so you can see it, which makes it much easier when you want to appeal.
But another really common sense thing that I would just recommend your listeners do with any agency that they file a FOIA request with, especially if they’re using AI to help craft the request, prompt your AI to look at that agency’s, in this case it’s GSA’s, FOIA regulations and FOIA handbook to help you craft the strongest FOIA request possible. Because even though the FOIA is a government-wide statute, every agency has specific rules about how they handle it.
So if you can use an agency’s own rule book to really finesse your FOIA request, including understanding the record system and their their processing administrative processing track, that can really put you on a step forward to to having the most perfected request possible.
BJ: So something we discovered in putting together our articles about Newburgh is something called the Office of Professional Responsibility at ICE. And as you might have seen, this is the office that has, allegedly, I mean, you know, according to a number of people, has sent agents to harass people who have posted online, for example xomments that were critical of ICE. So let’s say you’re a reader and you come across this Office of Professional Responsibility and you want to FOIA them, but you don’t know much, what could they do in that situation?
Lauren: Well, I think the the best advice is: Don’t file a FOIA request, I think, until you have a good idea of what you’re asking for. And with the Office of Professional Responsibility, for example, that it was mentioned, I think it was a Wired article, NPR, a couple other places talked about it, we actually at Freedom of the Press Foundation actually filed a FOIA request not only about their visit to the Poll worker who was visited, to put it nicely, at her polling station place of work for posting what appeared to be just a photo of the Wired article that named Jonathan Ross. the best thing that you can do, so we filed a FOIA request about the visit that ICE made. And so things that we did to help target that request was: We named some of the ICE agents, the DHS agents who showed up because those were mentioned in AP and NPR reporting. And we also asked for information that might be related to ICE’s social media monitoring of people who were sharing the original article that named Ross, which was a Minnesota Star Tribune article.
And we also asked for anything that might be used to track articles shared by the journalists who authored that January 8th Minnesota Star Tribune article.
And so really I think the the point here, is if you don’t know exactly what you’re asking for, wait until you do.
And when you do, do your research that can help you identify individual names of ICE agents in this case, for example, individual events. That’s a really great place to start. So the you know, listing the the date of the event to visit, the poll worker is a great way for an FOIA officer to initiate a search.
The other thing that is in your best interest to do, and so for example, if you already know about the ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility or are one step ahead, is to not just submit a FOIA request to ICE for all records at the agency across the board about a certain event. Your best bet is always to examine an agency’s organizational chart to help you identify which bureau or office is most likely to have the records that you’re looking for. And the reason this is important is because the vast majority of FOIA officers across the government don’t have direct access to their agencies or bureaus records. So if I submit a FOIA request to the State Department, for example, that FOIA officer has to try and figure out from my request which bureau is most likely to have those records.
Now they might do a good job guessing, or that might not, but if you can do your due diligence to say those records are most likely to be in this office, you’re gonna help get your request process a lot faster.
And to the extent that you can name individual officials at those agencies, which is not always possible, but when you can, that also gives the FOIA officer a much better shot of submitting the tasking out that request to the person most likely to have those documents and actually be able to find documents to get back to you.
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BJ: Sort of on a similar track, let me give you the background this. So: Before ICE moved to this 800 corporate boulevard address, they had initially wanted a warehouse in the village of Chester, New York, at 29 Elizabeth Drive. And allegedly a conversation took place between New York Assemblyman Brian Maher and an unidentified representative of ICE. where they communicated Maher, due to environmental concerns involving Bob Turtle, they were not gonna proceed with 29 Elizabeth Drive.
Now this is all this is all hearsay, you know, you have believe Assemblyman Brian Maher, and there’s no reason to believe in this case that he’s lying, but there’s no way to corroborate the corroborate the story.
What, if anything, could someone do via FOIA to help corroborate something like that?
Lauren: I would take a multi-pronged approach. Well, I guess in this case, you know, I’m not as familiar with the rules around the FOI law in New York, but something you could do is submit a FOIA request for ICE for all communications between a certain date range that mention Assemblymember Maher.
You know, that a name is a very good keyword search.
And if the alleged reason that it wasn’t built was environmental or the bog turtle, you could also ask for communications that mention the name of the species of turtle, for example. but this again is a request that would be strengthened not just by those keywords, but by going to ICE’s organizational chart. And identifying, okay, which office is most likely to have done the environmental search and which office is most likely to be communicating with legislative or you know policy officials at the federal or the state level, because every agency usually has a single office that’s dedicated to working with lawmakers at various branches of government.
So that would be one ICE office to look at, and then surely there is another one that would be interested or charged with looking at these environmental concerns.
That’s that’s where I would start.
BJ: I would advise people listening to to do as well.
So my last two questions for you are, now what happens when you run into a brick wall. So for example, FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) in New York State is something we’re very familiar with and there are a LOT of exceptions.
So, just for readers, we requested communications from Governor Kathy Hochul to an organization known as United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove, which is at the center of an election fraud scandal in the Cillage of South Blooming Grove.
Hochul, after making us wait a year, claimed under Interagency, to not release any files. Under FOIA, can people expect something similar to their responses?
Lauren: Yes. Short answer unfortunately is yes. And I think my headline is do not be deterred by any of the roadblocks that you’re gonna encounter. I think it’s easy, especially in this environment, to think that you know there’s sometimes an intentional or malicious reason that your FOIA request is not getting responded to. Sometimes that’s true, but there’s also just a lot of bureaucratic red tape that’s built up at agencies across the decades that are kind of just benign benign … benign is the wrong word, but not necessarily malicious reasons why your FOIA isn’t getting processed.
The best thing you can do, is whether you’re going to sue or not, is after you file your FOIA request, find the number or the email or the phone number for that FOIA office’s public liaison and call or send an email every 30 days asking for an estimated date of completion.
This is something that every agency is obligated to provide to you. And I can tell you as somebody who used to work in a FOIA office for the Department of Commerce that when I got those, it always prompted me to check in with the people I had tasked that FOIA request to outside of the agency.” Hey, what’s the status on this? Is there anything we can do to move this forward?” It’s not a pain. You’re not being a nuisance. Just know that that’s your right to do that and to take advantage of that because I guarantee that will get a FOIA officer to think about your request more frequently than they would otherwise.
The other thing to do, especially, not necessarily at GSA, but certainly with ICE, one of the things that FOIA requesters across the board are seeing more of is ICE coming back and saying, and other agencies do this too, but your request is overbroad, even if that’s not true. So even before you get that denial, what I would encourage people to do is to read the FOIA statute and understand what the definitions of overbroad actually means because a large search is not the same as an overbroad search.
And another thing that ICE will often do is say that your request isn’t clear, it requires more clarification. Sometimes that’s true, sometimes that’s not true. So get familiar with what those definitions and parameters are to put you in the best place to appeal.
And as far as if and when you get a denial, there are a couple really good resources that can help you file an appeal, including AI.
You can still use AI at the appeal stage, but my favorite resource to point people to that, that has really understandable sections for anything that you might encounter is something called FOIA Wiki. Now, this was something that was spearheaded by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
I helped contribute it to it when I worked at the National Security Archive, but it’s basically its own little Wikipedia that has information on every exemption that you might face, including agency claims that your request is overbroad.
And on every page, there’s an example, there’s a section on strategies to how to combat this denial, and it lists out case law and stuff that you can go through. And that’s something that you could feed into an LLM to help you craft an appeal for your own specific situation.
Another great resource to look at is the National Security Archives book, Effective FOIA Requesting for Everybody. This also has really good boilerplate appeals that you can use and plug into your perhaps AI for crafting your own appeal as well.
So don’t be daunted, one if you get ignored. File those estimated dates of completion every 30 days.
And if you do get a denial, don’t be, don’t be intimidated by it. Just go ahead and go to FOIA Wiki and see how often this happens and say, okay, what is my best strategy here?
Because when you do file an appeal, that usually kicks your FOIA request up to somebody who knows the FOIA process at an agency better and knows the law better. And this is really critical because over the last year and a half, a lot of FOIA officers have left the government.
So there are a lot of contractors sitting in places like ICE’s FOIA workshop who don’t know the know the law as well as they should. So getting that appeal can get eyes on it by somebody who actually knows the law, which is to your benefit.
BJ: Is there anything I didn’t ask you on the AI front or FOIA in general that you think people should know?
Lauren: The way you framed it is in your article is, you know, the AI using AI shouldn’t be the beginning or the end of your request. Double check everything, but use AI for its strengths, which can be helping you narrow down the kinds of documents these agencies have and know what to put in your prompt.
Things like organizational infrastructure, agency specific FOIA regulations, those are those are all to your benefit. But I I would also underscore, you know, I understand a lot of folks want a FOIA ICE right now, and DHS, I do it all the time. But don’t file that FOIA request until you have a specific idea of what you’re asking for. But when you do, you should be well prepared with all the stuff we’ve talked about to file a really effective FOIA request.
