The Trump administration’s efforts to deport students and campus activists have been cloaked in secrecy, whether it’s the masked agents that snatched Rümeysa Öztürk off the streets, the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi at what should have been his citizenship interview, or the government’s shifting legal arguments to detain them.
The troubling lack of transparency extended to court battles, too. In the cases of both Öztürk and Mahdawi, an obscure court rule required an in-person visit to a Vermont federal courthouse to review key materials, including the Trump administration’s briefs and exhibits defending their detention.
These cases are critical tests of free speech and the constitutional limits on targeting noncitizens over their dissent. So The Intercept fought to make the full dockets public. So far, we’ve been successful in eight federal courts, six districts, and two federal appellate circuits — and we’re doing the same in other cases across the country.
Here’s how we’re doing it.
In every case, The Intercept started by reaching out to the plaintiff’s legal team.
The docket access restrictions in these historic court cases come from Rule 5.2(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which aims to protect immigrants’ privacy as they challenge detention and deportation orders in court. This means that the strongest argument in favor of lifting the restrictions is that the plaintiffs themselves want the public to have full access to court filings, or at least don’t oppose it. In some cases, the plaintiffs and their legal teams were already publishing court documents online, although there was often a lag between when a document was filed in court and when it was accessible to the press.
After The Intercept reached out, many plaintiffs filed motions to lift the docket restrictions, including Öztürk and class-action plaintiffs challenging their deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. Judges quickly granted many of these motions.
In other cases, The Intercept sent letters to the judges and clerks to underscore the importance of court transparency and urge them to lift the restrictions. Some judges and clerks ignored these letters, while others took these concerns quite seriously.
In one pivotal case regarding arbitrary visa revocations, for example, federal district judge Ana Reyes noted The Intercept’s request on the case docket and asked if there was any opposition to making records in the case available to the public. When the plaintiff and the government confirmed there was no objection, Reyes ordered the clerk to lift the docket restrictions.
In May, The Intercept sent similar letters to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals about the Öztürk and Mahdawi cases. Öztürk had previously asked the trial court to lift the restrictions, but the judge didn’t rule on that request before the Trump administration appealed. The Second Circuit clerk’s office quickly docketed The Intercept’s letters, and within two days the full appellate record was publicly accessible in both cases. Soon after, the trial court judges lifted the restrictions in both cases, too.
Finally, in some cases, opening dockets to the public required The Intercept to file formal court motions.
In the case of Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian woman who is still in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention in Texas, The Intercept filed a motion with pro bono representation from the First Amendment Clinic at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. In Massachusetts federal court, The Intercept filed a motion in the case of Efe Ercelik, a Turkish student at Hampshire College, with pro bono representation from Albert Sellars LLP. And most recently, in late June, The Intercept filed a motion in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the case of Badar Khan Suri, a scholar at Georgetown University, with pro bono help from attorneys at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
In each case, judges quickly lifted restrictions following The Intercept’s motions.
As the Trump administration continues its historic deportation campaign and targets immigrants for their dissent, new cases are being filed everyday with similar docket restrictions under Rule 5.2(c). And The Intercept is working to ensure the public and other members of the press have full, transparent access to court records in these historic battles over dissent, immigrants’ rights, and state power.
