Sacramento leaders sent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement letters regarding individuals who are allegedly being held in the John Moss Federal Building in Sacramento.
Allegedly, Sacramento leaders have received reports from the Sacramento community organizations of detained individuals being held in inadequate conditions. The 2025 National Detention Standards are in place to ensure proper conditions in ICE detention facilities.
Three pet-peaves of mine are: 1) articles which excessively couch their statements with “allegedly”, a habit from law practice that isn’t necessary in journalism under the Fair Reporting Privilege and is especially gratuitous when the subject of the statement is a government entity, whom generally cannot sue (or be sued) for defamation, 2) articles that are supposed to be news but are basically summaries of a press release and nothing else, and 3) not linking to the source material.
This article commits all three. It is a summary of Congresswoman Matsui’s letter, and City of Sacramento’s letter, both addressed to the ICE (acting) Field Office Director. They’re both one-page letters, so better to spend your time reading the source rather than FOX40’s “article”. Whereas KCRA’s reporting included the links for both letters.
If either TV station wanted to thoroughly report about this event, they could have explained the different legal positions that the Congresswoman or the City have, for requesting on-site inspections. Such reportage would cite the federal law which allows US Congress members to schedule planned (or even surprise) visits to all federal facilities, under Congress’s long-held investigative authority, for the purpose of consideration of laws to fix problems that the inspection uncovers. This could also have included references to the arrest of Congresswoman McIver of New Jersey, outside of an ICE facility when seeking to perform an inspection, to explain to the reader that while the law is clear, the executive is being obstructionate.
This right in law for Congress members could have been contrasted in the article with the limited powers of local governments to inspect a federal facility. And the City of Sacramento recognizes this as well, with their letter focusing on habitability standards and hazards from the building being unfit for purpose. A reader unfamiliar with the relationship of municipal zoning/occupancy law would not know that these laws still apply to federal buildings, but only to the degree that they don’t interfere with a federal agency’s lawful mandate. And so an explanation of that intersection of laws would have been useful.
But this article doesn’t do that.
Yeah I agree but this was the only source I could find. Local news in Sac is basically 1. CapRadio, 2. SacBee and then below that it’s trash.
Thank you for posting the letters here, that’s useful context.
Should I delete and repost KCRA? That does seem to be a better article?
Quite frankly, what you wrote is better than any article I’ve seen on this topic.
IMO, I’d keep the link and add the additional contexts and links to the post’s body. No singular source will ever provide the full context, so the next best is to provide all available and relevant resources without being overwhelming.
Update: Rep. Doris Matsui attempted an inspection of the facility to observe any possible mistreatment of detainees, but was illegally denied entry to the facility by ICE.
