Immigration Records

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  • The Reporters Committee in 2025 published a comprehensive guide on access to immigration-related records: https://www.rcfp.org/resources/immigration-reporting-legal-guide/#i-accessing-immigration-records. A summary of its contents follows:
    • Many of the relevant federal agencies are contained within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and most federal agencies are subject to FOIA. Additional insight into how some of these agencies process immigration-related records requests has been published by the International Refugee Assistance Project. Below are further details about how to submit requests to the relevant agencies, as well as a discussion of important FOIA exemptions to be aware of and additional suggestions for reporters seeking immigration records.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

ICE is a federal law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security and operates detention facilities. ICE is tasked with enforcing laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration. FOIA requests can be filed online through the DHS FOIA portal or by mail. ICE also has a FOIA library where certain agency records can be viewed publicly without a request.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

USCIS is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for processing immigration and naturalization applications. USCIS is subject to FOIA, and requests can be submitted online or by mail. You can request:

- Your own immigration records.

- USCIS maintains A-Files that contain all records of any active case of a noncitizen going through the immigration process, corresponding to a unique A-Number assigned to that noncitizen by DHS.

- USCIS maintains custody of A-Files until they are eligible for transfer to the National Archives 100 years after the immigrant’s birth.

- A-Files can include visas, photographs, affidavits, and correspondence leading to a noncitizen’s naturalization, permanent residency, death, or deportation.

- Someone else’s immigration records if you have their written permission.

- Agency policies, data, communications, and other records.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

CBP is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security and operates immigration detention facilities. U.S. Border Patrol agents are part of CBP. and the agency is subject to FOIA. You can request:

Your own records (or another person’s records if you have their signed consent) of international travel to/from the U.S., apprehensions/detentions by Border Patrol, and secondary inspections at Ports of Entry.

Agency information such as policies, data, communications, etc.

Immigration Detention Facilities

ICE oversees more than 100 detention centers across the country where many noncitizens are housed until they go through immigration proceedings and are removed. ICE provides an “Online Detainee Locator System” for identifying the facility at which a detainee may be held at a particular time. Detention facilities that are owned and operated by the federal government — including the Migrant Operation Center in Guantanamo Bay — are subject to FOIA. Many facilities, however, are privately operated through contracts with ICE, and therefore are not subject to FOIA. But even in those instances, the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) handles inspections of detentions at private facilities and is subject to FOIA. DHS is moving to a new system for processing FOIA requests, and OIG has not fully transitioned to it as of February 2025. Until the move is complete, FOIA requests can be made to DHS OIG by email or by mail. OIG also offers a FOIA Electronic Reading Room, where it provides frequently requested records for public inspection in electronic form. FOIA requests require the signature of the detained individual, as do any requests made under the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a, which controls the federal government’s record-keeping about individuals and allows individuals to access their personal records.

Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR)

EOIR is a sub-agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, and its chief function is to conduct removal proceedings in immigration courts and adjudicate appeals arising from those proceedings. EOIR differs significantly from federal court, and there are no public dockets available for non-parties to track filings. EOIR is, however, subject to FOIA. Individuals who are party to EOIR proceedings (i.e., noncitizens the government is seeking to remove) may also submit a request for their Record of Proceeding (ROP) by submitting an EOIR-59 form, which is a privacy waiver that can only be completed by the person who is the subject of the proceedings. This request falls outside the FOIA process and is made directly to the court in which the proceeding occurred. The ROP will include “the documents that the Department of Homeland Security and the noncitizen have provided, including all the correspondence DHS and the noncitizen have sent to and received from the court.” Journalists working with the individual subject to removal proceedings may wish to include an EOIR-59 form along with any FOIA request. A journalist can request an ROP without the EOIR-59 form and participation of the respondent using the typical FOIA process. Journalists submitting a request without the EOIR-59 form should specify that they are not seeking personally identifiable information and that they are willing to receive records with that information redacted in accordance with FOIA. Such requests will be subject to standard FOIA exemptions, detailed further below. Every hearing in front of an immigration judge is recorded, unless the judge has authorized an off-the-record discussion. Those recordings are included in the ROP and are also subject to FOIA. If the decision by the immigration judge is appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), a transcript will be created for the appellate record of the proceeding. Appellate records are subject to FOIA, and a journalist may wish to request the transcript in addition to or in place of the audio recording of the hearing.

Relevant FOIA Exemptions

FOIA Exemptions 3, 5, 6, and 7 are the most likely to be asserted by the government in the immigration context. You can read more about them generally in the corresponding Wiki sections. As applied to the immigration context:

Exemption 3, which applies to records exempted from disclosure by other statutes, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(3),  is commonly invoked in the immigration context in connection with 8 U.S.C. § 1202(f), which states that “records of the Department of State and of diplomatic and consular offices of the United States pertaining to the issuance or refusal of visas or permits to enter the United States shall be considered confidential and shall be used only for the formulation, amendment, administration, or enforcement of the immigration, nationality, and other laws of the United States.” This was the most common statute relied on by the government in response to FOIA requests between 2010 and 2019, cited 173,879 times. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT: Update on Federal Agencies’ Use of Exemption Statutes, U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off. (Jan. 2021), https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/711741.pdf. A requester can challenge a denial under this exemption if they are requesting information that does not relate to a past or present visa application, such as a document with “biographical data and information about [an individual’s] activities while in immigration detention.” Immigr. Just. Clinic of Benjamin N. Cardozo L. Sch. v. U.S. Dep’t of State, No. 12 Civ. 1874, 2012 WL 5177410, at *1, 4 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 18, 2012). To date, courts have only upheld an agency’s invocation of 1202(f) where the requester sought “an actual visa application.” Id. at *2.  “Section 1202(f) cannot be extended to cover materials unrelated to a visa issuance or denial simply because those documents are contained in a database among other documents that may pertain to visa issuances and denials.” Darnbrough v. Dep’t of State, 924 F. Supp. 2d 213, 218 (D.D.C. 2013).

Exemption 6 exempts “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6). Individual immigrants who are the subjects of removal proceedings are likely to have a strong privacy interest in their personal information revealed in the course of those proceedings, making this exemption relevant. For instance, cases in which the individual is seeking asylum to avoid removal can include highly sensitive details about persecution the individual claims they faced in their home country. In the immigration context, this exemption has also been used to protect the identities of ICE employees who, for the purposes of responding to a FOIA request, ran searches of a database holding records of immigration removal proceedings; the court held there was no public interest or benefit in learning the individuals’ names and login information. Rojas-Veja v. Immigr. & Customs Enf’t, 302 F. Supp. 3d 300, 310 (D.D.C. 2018). However, the D.C. Circuit has refused to apply Exemption 6 to the names of all immigration judges who had complaints against them, stating that “across-the-board redaction of all judges’ names from all responsive documents was inadequately justified” because “not every judge has the same privacy interests at stake and not every complaint would equally enlighten the public about what their government is up to.” Am. Immigr. Laws. Ass’n v. Exec. Off. for Immigr. Rev., 830 F.3d 667, 674–76 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Exemption 7 permits federal agencies to withhold information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only if the release of that information could result in one of the enumerated harms found in 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A–F). Agencies that do not have law enforcement powers, such as the CIA or USCIS, are unable to invoke the exemption. There is a circuit split on how exactly to determine if the records are compiled for law enforcement purposes. One set of courts has held that any record from a law enforcement agency automatically qualifies for this exemption. Other courts disagree and apply a “rational nexus test,” asking whether the investigation that gave rise to the document relates to the enforcement of federal laws and whether there is a nexus between the investigation and one of the agency’s law enforcement duties. Once the agency establishes that the record was compiled for law enforcement purposes, it must point to the specific harm that would be implicated by disclosure. Two sub-categories of Exemption 7 are particularly likely to come up in the immigration context.  Exemption 7(C) protects information that “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Agencies also must prove that the harm to the individual’s privacy outweighs the benefits of disclosure. For example, a court found that releasing the names of Border Patrol agents accused of abusing children in DHS custody was significantly in the public interest, because the names were necessary for the public to know whether an agent was a repeat offender and whether DHS had investigated the agent. Am. C.L. Union of Ariz. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., No. CV-15-00247, 2018 WL 1428153 (D. Ariz. Mar. 22, 2018). One court rejected the invocation of Section 7(C) in a suit over a request about a particular immigration raid, finding that the public interest in disclosure of the names of ICE agents who may have acted improperly during an immigration raid outweighed any privacy concerns. CASA de Md., Inc. v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 409 F. App’x 697, 700–01 (4th Cir. 2011) (per curiam). But the Ninth Circuit has held that the names of 149 non-citizens released by ICE were properly exempted from disclosure, holding that there is an “often hostile atmosphere surrounding unauthorized immigration” that created a risk that the individuals, if identified, would be harassed. Tuffly v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 870 F.3d 1086, 1096 (9th Cir. 2017). The other important sub-exemption is Exemption 7(E), which exempts records compiled for law enforcement purposes that “would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions if such disclosure could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.” Agencies have used this to avoid disclosing information such as DHS criteria for ranking immigration enforcement priorities and documents related to the planning and execution of ICE raids. Allard K. Lowenstein Int’l Hum. Rts. Project v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 626 F.3d 678, 681–82 (2d Cir. 2010); Unidad Latina En Acción v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 253 F.R.D. 44, 54 (D. Conn. 2008); see also Am. Immigr. Laws. Ass’n v. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 21 F. Supp. 3d 60, 82 (D.D.C. 2014). Courts have also upheld agencies’ redaction of guidelines and procedures, but have held that information such as questions asked to immigrant minors did not involve a “special method or skill” and therefore were not covered by the exemption. Campbell v. Dep’t of Just., 164 F.3d 20, 32 (D.C. Cir. 1998). The burden falls on the agency to both establish that the technique is not known to the public and that the release of the information would reasonably risk circumvention of the law.

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