by Lisa Peet

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has requested that National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Records Management sign off on a records retention schedule that would potentially destroy detainee records in 11 item categories, including accounts of solitary confinement, assault, sexual abuse, and investigations into deaths in ICE custody. Proposed retention periods ranged from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for solitary confinement reports; this means that records dating back to ICE’s founding in 2003 could be destroyed as early as 2023.

All federal agencies periodically propose a retention schedule for a series of records to NARA, to determine which must be retained permanently in the National Archives and which can be considered temporary—and how long temporary records must be retained before they can be destroyed. NARA staff reviews each submission, typically meeting with agency subject matter experts, before the records schedule is approved by the Archivist of the United States.

In addition to deciding which records have lasting historical or research value and warrant permanent retention, NARA reviews the retention periods proposed for temporary records to ensure that those spans protect the legal rights of both the Government and private parties. Public input on the proposed schedules is mandated by law, and is solicited through comments on a notice posted to the Federal Register.

ICE’s proposed schedule DAA-0567-2015-0013, submitted in October 2015, represented a new request for the disposition of unscheduled records, rather than a change to an existing schedule. Since it was posted to the Federal Register on July 14, 2017, it has garnered an unprecedented number of comments, received substantial attention in the media, and raised concerns among archivists, historians, and civil liberties organizations.