Immigration lawyers challenging how the Department of Homeland Security provides records needed for asylum and deportation cases have lost their federal appeal after judges ruled that the additional time and expense of obtaining those documents did not give them standing to sue.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled October 29, 2026, that the attorneys and a legal aid organization also failed to establish a uniform DHS policy requiring immigrants to obtain records through Freedom of Information Act requests. The decision upholds the dismissal of their lawsuit while leaving the government's underlying disclosure obligations undecided.
Greater Boston Legal Services, attorneys Annelise Araujo and Stefanie Fisher, and their law firm sued DHS in January 2021, alleging that immigration agencies routinely directed clients to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents needed to prepare their cases. Those records included earlier visa applications, asylum interview notes, immigration filings and documents from previous deportation proceedings.
Delayed and incomplete responses forced attorneys to reconstruct their clients' immigration histories through interviews, court records and requests to previous lawyers, according to the lawsuit. Some sought postponements in immigration court while waiting for documents, increasing the cost of representation and limiting the number of additional clients they could accept.
Federal law generally requires agencies to respond to FOIA requests within 20 business days, with an additional 10 days permitted under certain circumstances. The attorneys alleged that immigration agencies regularly missed those deadlines or returned records with missing or redacted information.
Writing for the three-judge panel, Judge Gustavo Gelpí found that the attorneys had combined different records-access practices across U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection into an alleged DHS-wide policy. The agencies used different disclosure procedures, and the court found the alleged injuries too speculative to establish standing.
Even assuming such a policy existed, the judges ruled that additional legal expenses and a reduced capacity to represent clients did not amount to the concrete injury required to sue. The court found that the lawyers could continue obtaining records through other means, despite the additional work involved.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper in Massachusetts had dismissed the claims involving deportation proceedings and later ruled for DHS on the remaining asylum-related challenge. During appellate arguments on May 7, the First Circuit raised the standing question and requested additional briefing before affirming the judgment on different grounds.
The lawyers had also relied on a 2010 Ninth Circuit decision, Dent v. Holder, which recognized access to immigration files for certain people required to establish lawful presence during deportation proceedings. They alleged that ICE limited its compliance with that ruling to cases within the Ninth Circuit while continuing to direct immigrants elsewhere to FOIA requests.
The decision ends the attorneys' challenge in the First Circuit, leaving DHS's existing records-access procedures in place. The judges did not decide whether the agencies must provide immigrants with documents through other means during asylum and deportation proceedings.
