Council Represents Media Organization in Lawsuit for Records Underlying DHS’s Unprecedented Mass Influx Declaration and Associated Agreements With State and Local Law Enforcement

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) Secretary has twice declared in less than five months that “an actual or imminent mass influx” of noncitizens is arriving along the entire southern border of the United States—once on January 23, 2025, and again on March 21, 2025. These declarations—the first ones ever—permit DHS to ask state and local governments for help administering U.S. immigration law and to deputize state and local law enforcement personnel as immigration officers.

So far at least Texas has answered the call for help. Border Patrol has authorized hundreds of Texas national guardsmen to conduct immigration arrests along the U.S.-Mexico border under an agreement between U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) and the Texas National Guard.
But border encounters were way down in January: Border Patrol encountered only 61,448 noncitizens at the southern border in January—35,000 fewer than in December 2024, 69,000 fewer than in June 2024, and 115,000 fewer than in January 2024.

On May 22, 2025, the Council sued DHS, CBP, and U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) on behalf of Documented—a NYC-based immigration news outlet—under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for not releasing the following records:

• Records considered by the DHS Secretary when making the initial mass influx declaration;
• Agreements executed by ICE, CBP, and DHS with state and local law enforcement agencies pursuant to this declaration;
• A recent agreement between ICE and Nassau County; and
• The document delegating authority to CBP to execute agreements like the one it entered into with the Texas National Guard.

Access to these records is crucial for the public to understand the Trump Administration’s novel use of long dormant provisions of U.S. immigration law and its unprecedented use of state and local law enforcement officers in immigration enforcement.