Privacy Act of 1974; Implementation

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <CFR>28 CFR Part 16</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CPCLO Order No. 004-2025]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Privacy Act of 1974; Implementation</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Executive Office for Immigration Review, United States Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In the Notice section of today's <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), a component within the United States Department of Justice (DOJ or Department), has published a notice of a modified system of records, Adjudication and Appeal Records of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals, JUSTICE/EOIR-001. This system of records has been exempted from the access and amendment provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, U.S.C. 552a(d), pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552a(k)(1), and (k)(2). <E T="03">See</E> 28 CFR 16.83. In this notice of proposed rulemaking, EOIR proposes to update 28 CFR 16.83 consistent with the system of records' modifications to exempt this system of records from certain provisions of the Privacy Act to protect properly classified information and law enforcement sensitive materials maintained in the system. For the reasons provided below, the Department proposes to update its Privacy Act regulations exempting records in this system from certain provisions of the Privacy Act. Public comment is invited. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by September 29, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Email:</E> <E T="03">privacy.compliance@usdoj.gov.</E> To ensure proper handling, please reference the CPCLO Order No. in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-307-0693. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> United States Department of Justice, Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties, ATTN: Privacy Analyst, Two Constitution Square, 145 N St. NE, Suite 8W-300, Washington, DC 20530. All comments sent via regular or express mail will be considered timely if postmarked on the day the comment period closes. To ensure proper handling, please reference the CPCLO Order No. in your correspondence. • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> When submitting comments electronically, you must include the CPCLO Order No. in the subject box. Please note that the Department is requesting that electronic comments be submitted before midnight Eastern Daylight Savings Time on the day the comment period closes because <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> terminates the public's ability to submit comments at that time. Commenters in time zones other than Eastern Time may want to consider this so that their electronic comments are received. <E T="03">Posting of Public Comments:</E> Please note that all comments received are considered part of the public record and made available for public inspection online at <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> and in the Department's public docket. Such information includes personally identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) voluntarily submitted by the commenter. If you want to submit personal identifying information (such as your name, address, etc.) as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online or made available in the public docket, you must include the phrase “PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also place all personal identifying information that you do not want posted online or made available in the public docket in the first paragraph of your comment and identify what information you want redacted. If you want to submit confidential business information as part of your comment, but do not want it to be posted online or made available in the public docket, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also prominently identify confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment has so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, all or part of that comment may not be posted online or made available in the public docket. Personal identifying information and confidential business information identified and located as set forth above will be redacted and the comment, in redacted form, may be posted online and placed in the Department's public docket file. Please note that the Freedom of Information Act applies to all comments received. If you wish to inspect the agency's public docket file in person by appointment, please see the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> paragraph, below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alexander Y. Hartman, Senior Component Official for Privacy, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Office of the General Counsel, 5107 Leesburg Pike, Suite 2600, Falls Church, VA 22041, <E T="03">Alexander.Hartman@usdoj.gov, EOIR.Privacy.Intake@usdoj.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR interprets and administers Federal immigration laws by conducting immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings. Two of EOIR's adjudicating components include the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge (OCIJ) and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA or Board). OCIJ oversees the administration of the immigration courts nationwide. 8 CFR 1003.9. Immigration judges are responsible for conducting immigration court proceedings. 8 CFR 1003.10. Decisions of immigration judges are subject to review by the BIA in any case in which the BIA has jurisdiction. 8 CFR 1003.10(c). The BIA is the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws. 8 CFR 1003.1. The BIA and its appellate immigration judges have nationwide jurisdiction to review certain decisions rendered by immigration judges, Adjudicating Officials in attorney discipline cases, and district directors of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 8 CFR 1003.1(b). Parties to immigration proceedings may file documents with the immigration court or the BIA by mail, hand delivery, or electronically. 8 CFR 1003.2(g), 1003.3(g), 1003.31. The official file containing the documents relating to an individual's immigration case is the Record of Proceeding (ROP), which may be paper or electronic. ROPs generally contain the Notice to Appear (Form I-862), hearing notices, a practitioner of record's entry of appearance form (Forms EOIR-27 or EOIR-28) (if any), any change of address forms (Form EOIR-33), applications for immigration relief, evidence, exhibits, motions, briefs, and all written orders and decisions of the immigration judge or appellate immigration judge(s). <E T="03">See</E> 8 CFR 1240.9. When relevant to the immigration relief sought, parties may also file documents and materials pertaining to an individual's criminal history or terroristic activities, and such materials are incorporated into the ROP. <E T="03">See</E> 8 U.S.C. 1182 (describing grounds for inadmissibility to include criminal- and security-related grounds). Such information may be classified or law enforcement sensitive, filed under seal or per a request for an <E T="03">in camera</E> hearing. Immigration hearings are digitally recorded, and hearings may be transcribed. 8 CFR 1240.9. Transcripts of hearings may also be included in the ROP. 8 CFR 1240.9. EOIR maintains a system of records used by OCIJ and the BIA to process, track, and adjudicate immigration proceedings. EOIR is modifying the system of records, Adjudication and Appeal Records of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals, JUSTICE/EOIR-001, to account for changes in the scope, character and format, and routine uses of records in this system that have occurred since EOIR last published a complete system of records notice on May 11, 2004. <E T="03">See</E> Records and Information Management System, JUSTICE/EOIR-001, 68 FR 26179 (May 11, 2004). EOIR is modifying the system of records in the following ways. First, EOIR is expanding the scope of this system of records by consolidating it with another system of records, Decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals, JUSTICE/BIA-001, 48 FR 5331 (Feb. 4, 1983). The records in both systems serve the same purposes, are authorized by the same legal authorities, and have similar routine uses. EOIR will rename JUSTICE/EOIR-001 from “Records and Management Information System” to “Adjudication and Appeal Records of the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge and Board of Immigration Appeals.” Second, EOIR is modifying this system of records to encompass electronic records used by OCIJ and the BIA to adjudicate immigration proceedings. OCIJ and the BIA have incorporated digital processes producing electronic records that are not currently captured in EOIR's systems of records notices. Third, EOIR is updating some of the routine uses of this system of records to clarify EOIR's current information sharing practices. Because the system of records is being modified, EOIR proposes to also update the Privacy Act exemptions claimed for the system. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Privacy Act Exemptions</HD> The Privacy Act allows Federal agencies to exempt eligible records in a system of records from certain provisions of the Act, including those that provide individuals with a right to request access to and amendment of records about the individual. If an agency intends to exempt a particular system of records, it must first issue a rulemaking pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(1)-(3), (c), and (e). The Departmen ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━