Dozens of detainees were held in a tent the night following the raid in 2018. Photo courtesy José Jiménez, ACLU of Nebraska.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska has dropped a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DHS’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) after DHS provided documents about an OIG investigation into a 2018 immigration raid.

The ACLU of Nebraska filed a court motion on Friday dismissing the lawsuit, which argued that federal officials were unlawfully ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the OIG investigation. The investigation focused on concerns that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated the civil rights of the people they detained during an immigration raid in and around O’Neill, Nebraska in 2018.

The ACLU of Nebraska says its lawsuit prompted DHS to provide the requested documents, which detail interviews and the OIG’s investigative process into the O’Neill raid. Documents show the OIG ultimately found the concerns of civil rights violations were unsubstantiated.

Jane Seu, an ACLU of Nebraska attorney, said that it’s too early to speak to any further plans related to this specific raid, but there’s value in letting the public see these documents and draw their own conclusions about the investigation.

“One of our attorneys facilitated interviews for this investigation and heard firsthand of the emotional and physical impact the raid had on workers,” Seu said in a press release Tuesday. “It is deeply troubling to see those concerns essentially met with a shrug in the OIG’s finding.”

The 2018 raid in O’Neill was prompted by an indictment against three companies for the hiring and mistreatment of immigrants. ICE had warrants for 17 people and took 133 people into custody in total during the raid.

The ACLU of Nebraska filed the FOIA request in June of 2020. According to the ACLU of Nebraska, DHS officials initially said they’d give a timely response to the request, but ceased contact with the group. The civil rights organization sued this August and federal officials turned over 77 pages of partially redacted documents in late September. Those documents can be found on the ACLU of Nebraska’s website.

Seu said Tuesday it should not take a lawsuit for the public to access the documents, and said federal and state government employees have an obligation to comply with the federal Freedom of Information Act and state open records laws. 

“If you ignore our requests, we will see you in court,” Seu said.

The ACLU of Nebraska and the Immigrant Legal Center provided legal support and spoke to many immigrants who were detained and reported potential civil rights violations. An ACLU of Nebraska report criticized the operation at the time, detailing how immigrants were held overnight in the dirty clothes they’d been working in and those who couldn’t prove their documentation were handcuffed with chains around their waists and sent via bus to a detention center.

According to the report, advocates later learned one bus didn’t have air conditioning on the two-hour drive. Immigrants on one bus reported that ICE agents instead turned on heat when passengers asked for air conditioning. Once in the detention center, most went without food for approximately 12 hours, according to the report.


Learn more about your rights as an immigrant in Nebraska here. Aprende más sobre sus derechos como inmigrante en Nebraska aquí.

Bridget Fogarty, Report for America Corps Member

Bridget Fogarty is a Report for America Corps member reporting with El Perico and its English sister publication The Reader.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *