ICE Suddenly Loses Key Evidence One Day After Being Sued

ICE is claiming the computer ate its records the day after it was sued for abuse.

404 Media reports that after ICE’s Bridgeview Detention Center outside Chicago was sued October 30 for allegedly abusing detainees, the agency said that two weeks of video footage that could have shown how immigration detainees are treated in the facility was lost in a “system crash” on October 31.

“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” one of the lawyers representing detainees, Alec Solotorovsky, said in a Thursday hearing about the footage, according to 404 Media. “That period we think is going to be critical … because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security said in court that the video footage was “irretrievably destroyed,” and on Thursday, government lawyers said that “we don’t have the resources” to keep preserving surveillance footage from the detention facility. In a seemingly flippant remark, the government’s attorneys suggested if the detainees’ lawyers provide “endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”

The idea that ICE doesn’t have resources to preserve video footage is absurd on its face, as the agency is receiving an astronomical amount of funding thanks to President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Some $200 billion has been allocated to immigration enforcement, more than some countries allocate to their entire militaries, and at least some of that should be allocated to data preservation and I.T. maintenance.

Also, it seems too convenient for ICE to have had a system crash the day after they were sued. The detainees who filed the lawsuit claim that the ICE facility is rife with abusive treatment and poor living conditions. In response, the government hasn’t provided much information on the footage, directing attorneys to a company called Five by Five Management “that appears to be based out of a house,” said Solotorovsky.

“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” he said, adding that the government specialist attorneys spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.”

Immigration enforcement under Trump seems to continuously flout the law, with little recourse available except for lawsuits. At best, legal action seems to only slow the Trump administration’s actions. Will the detainees in Bridgeview be able to overcome what looks like a government cover-up?