The Denver Post:  Immigration officials violated federal open-records laws denying documents to a lawyer representing a woman who wanted to legalize her immigration status, according to claims made in a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Colorado’s American Civil Liberties Union.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, accuses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services of violating the Freedom of Information Act.

The Freedom of Information Act governs how federal agencies release documents to the public. The law provides nine reasons for an agency to deny records — including when records contain national security or confidential business information.

A Department of Homeland Security report describes the seventh reason as a need to protect documents gathered for law enforcement purposes that “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

According to the lawsuit, the agency did not provide one of those nine reasons as justification to withhold documents, but instead said it was practice for them to deny “access to the FOIA process when the records requested could assist the alien in continuing to evade immigration enforcement efforts.”

Immigration officials from ICE and USCIS did not respond to a request for comment.

Visit The Denver Post for more.