On Feb. 20, the Court of Appeals ruled that the University of Michigan needed to release the sealed papers given by the anti-immigration activist, John Tanton.
The Bentley Historical Library of the university received the papers, and was kept under the strict promise that a part of the collection should be kept private and unreleased to the public until the year 2035.
However, the recent ruling of the court was spurred on by the inquiry done by the Virginia-based immigration lawyer Hassan Ahmad. He first requested access to the file through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in May of 2017, but was quickly penalized with a $1,000 penalty fine for the privacy of the files.
The court ruled that, because of the FOIA, no argument could stand as the initial donor; Tanton passed away in 2019. Therefore, the court’s ruling stood on the lack of recognition of privacy rights for the deceased.
Therefore, the remaining collection of the anti-immigration files that were first donated will have to be fully published, and anti-immigration lawyer Hassan Ahmad will be refunded his previously given monetary penalty.
The importance of these fully released articles is that of Ahmad’s mission to unveil the roots of the anti-immigration movement of the area and to hopefully propose an improvement to the current administration.
“The #TantonPapers shine a light on the conceptual underpinnings of the policies that rip families apart, jail children and create a permanent underclass,” Ahmad posted on social media. “After all, what’s in the #TantonPapers they’re fighting so hard to hide?”
Tanton was an important individual to have tied to the files, as he was connected to a large network of a dozen different anti-immigration groups, also recognized as hate groups.
Tanton was the founder of the Federal American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 1979.
The public organization aims to use community outreach to share information with affected communities on how immigration will further change their own situations. The organization is still actively following its mission of limiting immigration as much as it can, as it has lobbied the federal government and testified in Congress.
Though the University tried to protect the file’s privacy, as was the donors’ requested year of release, the court found that even the argument used of the Library Privacy Act, which provides confidentiality to certain library records, could not stand as the importance of the filed material.
“The fact that a valid FOIA request can override a donor’s restrictions has no impact on defendant’s authority over its educational and financial decisions,” the panel released in a statement.
We can expect that this news may change the access and behavior for students’ lives, as new resources will be available to students of various departments and newfound opportunities for immigration-related research.
The University of Michigan may also be looking at future difficulties regarding donations to its Bentley Historical Library. Due to its restrictions as a public body of education, the university will have to continue the FOIA’s regulations and procedures, even if it comes at the cost of providing appropriate privacy for its future donors.
