Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-azd-2_09-cv-01329/USCOURTS-azd-2_09-cv-01329-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Jane Doe
Plaintiff
United States Department of Homeland Security
Defendant

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WO

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

Jane Doe, a minor, by and through her

Special Conservator, Josephine Gortarez, 

Plaintiff, 

vs.

Department of Homeland Security, 

Defendant. 

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No. CV09-1329-PHX-DGC

ORDER

Plaintiff is a minor child who brought suit in Maricopa County Superior Court against

the Scottsdale Unified School District (“SUSD”) and American Building Maintenance Co.

(“ABM”) “for personal injuries and other damages arising from [her] sexual assault, rape,

assault and battery, false imprisonment, and other injuries sustained at the hands of a janitor,

Roberto Lemus-Retana . . . an illegal alien, employed by [ABM] . . . while working at

Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Arizona.” Doc. 32 at 13. Plaintiff alleges that SUSD

and ABM negligently hired and supervised Mr. Lemus-Retana.

After filing the Superior Court litigation, Plaintiff initiated an inquiry into Mr. LemusRetana’s alien status in the United States. Id. Plaintiff also sought records confirming the

legal status of 95 employees who were working for ABM in 2006 while Mr. Lemus-Retana

was employed. Id. at 13-15. She sought those records for purposes of potentially proving

in the Superior Court litigation that ABM was negligent in screening its employees before

hiring them. Id. at 1. 

By stipulation, the United States Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”)

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provided Plaintiff with the relevant immigration information concerning Mr. Lemus-Retana.

The information confirmed that he was in the United States illegally at the time of the assault.

Plaintiff used immigration expert Neville Cramer to perform an investigation using the EVerify system, which gave a preliminary indication that 93 out of 95 of ABM’s other

employees were not authorized to work in the United States. Doc. 33 at 1. After receiving

this information, Plaintiff sent a request for disclosure to DHS, pursuant to 6 C.F.R. § 5.45

(the “Touhy request”), in which she sought written confirmation of the legal status of the 95

employees. Doc. 32 at 13-19. This Court ordered DHS to respond to the request by April 9,

2010. Doc. 27. On April 8, 2010, DHS responded and refused to provide Plaintiff with the

requested information, claiming that it need not provide the information under relevant

agency regulations. Doc. 32 at 24-26. 

The parties have now submitted briefing on whether DHS should be required to

comply with the Touhy request. Docs. 32, 33, 34, 35. For reasons that follow, the Court

finds that DHS has not abused its discretion.

I. APA Review.

This Court has authority to review DHS’s denial of Plaintiff’s Touhy request under

the Administrative Procedures Act (“APA”). DHS asserts that APA review is required in this

case (Doc. 33), and Plaintiff does not disagree (Doc. 34). 

Under the APA, a court may “set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found

to be . . . arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with

law[.]” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). “Under the arbitrary and capricious standard, a reviewing

court must determine whether an agency’s decision was based on a consideration of the

relevant factors and whether there has been a clear error of judgment.” Mt. St. Helens Mining

& Recovery Ltd. P’Ship v. U.S., 384 F.3d 721, 728 (9th Cir. 2004). This standard “is highly

deferential, presuming the agency action to be valid and affirming the agency action if a

reasonable basis exists for its decision.” Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund v. Dep’t of

Agric., 499 F.3d 1108, 1115 (9th Cir. 2007) (internal quotation and citation omitted).

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II. Touhy Requests.

In U.S. ex rel. Touhy v. Ragen, 340 U.S. 462 (1951), the Supreme Court upheld the

authority of federal agencies to promulgate procedural regulations governing “the custody,

use and preservation of [its] records, papers and property.” Under Touhy, a federal agency

can create its own regulations for when it will disclose information to third parties. DHS

regulations for Touhy requests are found at 6 C.F.R. § 5.45 and 6 C.F.R. § 5.48. Under the

regulations, DHS must consider the following factors in determining whether to grant a

request for information:

(1) Whether such compliance would be unduly burdensome or otherwise

inappropriate under the applicable rules of discovery or the rules of procedure

governing the case or matter in which the demand arose; 

(2) Whether compliance is appropriate under the relevant substantive law

concerning privilege or disclosure of information; 

(3) The public interest; 

(4) The need to conserve the time of Department employees for the conduct of

official business; 

(5) The need to avoid spending the time and money of the United States for

private purposes; 

(6) The need to maintain impartiality between private litigants in cases where

a substantial government interest is not implicated; 

(7) Whether compliance would have an adverse effect on performance by the

Department of its mission and duties; and 

(8) The need to avoid involving the Department in controversial issues not

related to its mission. 

6 C.F.R. § 5.48(a). 

The regulations also require the party requesting the information to explain why the

information is relevant:

If official information is sought, through testimony or otherwise, by a request

or demand, the party seeking such release or testimony must (except as

otherwise required by federal law or authorized by the Office of the General

Counsel) set forth in writing, and with as much specificity as possible, the

nature and relevance of the official information sought.

6 C.F.R. § 5.45(a).

/ / /

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III. Analysis.

DHS concluded that compliance with Plaintiff’s request would be unduly burdensome,

requiring 40 hours of initial inquiry and an additional 2,200 hours of investigation. Doc. 32

at 25. The Court finds this conclusion to be reasonable. 

DHS based its estimate on a few important facts: Plaintiff did not seek documents,

but instead sought written verification of the immigration status of all 95 employees and

designation of a DHS agent or officer to provide deposition and trial testimony. Id. at 15.

The thrust of Plaintiff’s request was a determination of whether the 95 employees were

authorized to work in this country. Such a determination, DHS explained, would require

more than simple verification of immigration status: “Having permission to be present in the

United States and permission to work in the United States are two different matters.

Individuals who may be lawfully present in the United States may not have authorization to

work (i.e., nonimmigrant visitors for pleasure), while those who may be unlawfully present

in the United States may have authorization to work (i.e., aliens who entered without

inspection but have received work authorization through certain programs).” Id. at 25. 

DHS provided this explanation for its work estimate:

Determining whether 95 individuals maintain lawful presence in the

United States is a task that is not as simple as running names through a single

database. We estimate that running the names, dates of birth, social security

numbers, and other identifying information through the appropriate DHS

databases would require approximately forty man hours. Once we obtain this

information, we would likely have to conduct further investigation to confirm

their status in the United States and then to determine whether they have

authorization to work. Such investigation would likely require pulling

additional information from multiple databases, searching for and reviewing

hard copies of documents and files, and potentially interviewing individuals

as well. As you may be aware, the non-existence of a record for an individual

might mean that the individual is not lawfully present in the United States, but

may also mean that the individual is a United States citizen. As such, inperson interviews would be necessary to confirm whether or not these 95

individuals have authorization to work in the United States. It is our estimate

that compliance with your request would require approximately thirty days and

involve ten investigators, for a total of 2200 man hours. It is therefore our

position that compliance would be unduly burdensome. 

Id.

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Plaintiff argues that DHS’s estimate is wrong. Plaintiff provides the affidavit of its

immigration expert, Neville Cramer, who opines that the entire search will take less than one

hour. In providing this opinion, however, Mr. Cramer asserts that the search should be

conducted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (“USCIS”) in Los Angeles, not by

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) as suggested in DHS’s response. Id. at 30.

But Plaintiff’s Touhy request did not ask that the search be conducted by USCIS; it

specifically was directed to ICE. Id. at 13. 

In addition, Mr. Cramer states that “[s]tatistics have shown from studies on the use

of E-Verify that in most cases where information provided on the I-9’s is not initially

verified, the vast majority of cases result in ‘No Record’ being located at Homeland Security,

or a record is located, but the alien is not legally authorized to work (as in cases where an

alien has ‘entered without inspection’). In these cases, no further checks are required, and

the employee is determined to be unauthorized to work in the U.S.” Id. at 30 (emphasis

added). Mr. Kramer seems to be suggesting that DHS could rely on statistical probabilities

and limit its search to initial database inquiries, but this certainly was never suggested in

Plaintiff’s Touhy request. That request sought “written verification,” “signed or executed by

an authorized agent or representative of the United States Department of Homeland

Security,” and an agent or officer to testify under oath in a deposition or at trial. DHS could

not reasonably rely on mere statistical probabilities to provide such definitive proof of

whether the 95 employees were authorized to work in the United States. 

Moreover, if statistical probabilities are all that is needed, Mr. Cramer can provide that

evidence himself. He has conducted the E-Verify search that has produced the initial results,

and presumably could testify to their statistical significance.

DHS provided several other reasonable explanations for its decision to deny Plaintiff’s

request:

In addition, we believe that our compliance with your request would

require DHS to become involved in a matter between private litigants where

a substantial government interest is not implicated. To do so would allow a

private party to initiate enforcement actions against private businesses that

may not already be the subject of an open DHS investigation. On the other

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hand, to the extent that [ABM] or its employees are already under investigation

by DHS, compliance with your request potentially could impede such

investigation. Moreover, once it became known in the business community

that DHS would perform these checks at the behest of a private party, we could

easily anticipate that other businesses would seek that we do the same so as to

obtain a competitive advantage.

Id. at 25. 

DHS also observed that Plaintiff had not demonstrated the relevancy of the requested

information in the state court lawsuit. Id. at 24. This conclusion was reasonable in light of

the fact that DHS had before it competing memoranda on the relevancy of the information

prepared by Plaintiff and ABM. ABM’s memorandum, which argued that the information

would not be relevant, included a more detailed discussion of the law that would govern

relevancy in state court. Doc. 33-3.

As already noted, under the arbitrary and capricious standard, the Court must

determine whether DHS’s decision was based on a consideration of the relevant factors and

whether there was a clear error of judgment. Mt. St. Helens Mining, 384 F.3d at 728. The

standard is highly deferential, presuming the agency action to be valid and affirming the

agency action if a reasonable basis exists for its decision. Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal

Fund, 499 F.3d at 1115. The Court cannot conclude that DHS failed to consider relevant

factors or committed a clear error of judgment. Each of the factors considered by DHS is set

forth in the relevant regulations, and DHS’s consideration of those factors was reasonable.

Affording the agency appropriate deference, the Court concludes that DHS’s denial of the

Touhy request was not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.

IT IS ORDERED:

1. Plaintiff’s request for an order requiring DHS to produce the requested

information is denied. 

2. The Clerk shall terminate this action.

DATED this 7th day of September, 2010.

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