CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia announced Wednesday it has joined other affiliates in filing lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection.
The action is one of 13 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits from affiliates demanding information connected to President Donald Trump’s executive orders regarding immigration.
Trump signed the first order in January halting immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspending refugees from the entering the country for 120 days, as well as Syrian refugees permanently.
The order was met with protests at airports and was frozen by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The second order was signed in March, and would have imposed a 90-day ban on six Muslim-majority countries and a 120-day suspension on accepting Syrian refugees. Federal district judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued a temporary and nationwide injunction respectively on the action.
The ACLU is seeking records from 14 Customs and Border Protection offices regarding how the office implemented the executive order at 55 airports nationwide.
The ACLU of West Virginia is a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta. The affiliate is joined by ACLU organizations in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
The lawsuits identified Yeager Airport as a “local international airport” along with Charlotte/Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta and the Charleston International Airport in Charleston, South Carolina.
Yeager Airport is not an international airport, as it does not have flights to airports outside of the United States; the farthest airport planes fly to from Yeager is Houston.
“We are dealing here with an executive order that deeply disrupted peoples’ lives and an administration that has made it clear they don’t care about peoples’ civil liberties,” said Jamie Lynn Crofts, legal director of the ACLU of West Virginia, in a statement. “Government transparency has never been more important than it is right now.”
According to the national ACLU, the organization first requested the records on Feb. 2. Fifty ACLU affiliates filed 18 Freedom of Information Act requests on that day to Customs and Border Protection offices.
“Since the government has failed to substantively respond, the ACLU is now suing,” the national body said in a statement.