Ideological Screening at the Border
Documents released in our FOIA lawsuit for records on the "extreme vetting" program
This Reading Room contains all of the documents produced to date in Knight Institute v. DHS, a FOIA lawsuit the Knight Institute filed on October 4, 2017, seeking records on how the Trump administration is implementing the president’s call for an “extreme vetting program."
Our FOIA lawsuit sought records from the agencies charged with developing the program: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of State (DOS). We requested documents concerning the program and the government’s asserted power to exclude individuals on the basis of their speech, beliefs, or associations.
In response, the agencies released over 300 documents, many heavily redacted, and hardly any referencing the extreme vetting program itself.
How to use this Reading Room: The collection below can be searched by keyword, or filtered using the criteria in the left-hand column. In addition, any search can be filtered for “Key Documents,” which are the documents that Knight Institute staff have flagged as the most significant disclosed.
Showing 11–20 of 341
-
OIP FOIA Final Response Letter
Final response letter to Knight's FOIA request from DOJ-OIP.
5/30/2018
-
USCIS FOIA Response Letter
Response letter to Knight's 8/7/2017 FOIA request from USCIS.
5/30/2018
-
USCIS FOIA Response Letter
Response letter to Knight's 8/7/2017 FOIA request from USCIS.
5/22/2018
-
DHS FOIA Final Response Letter
Final response letter to Knight's FOIA request from DHS, withholding all requested pages.
5/18/2018
-
ICE FOIA Response Letter
Response letter to Knight's 8/7/2017 FOIA request from ICE.
4/30/2018
-
CBP FOIA Final Response Letter
Final response letter to Knight Institute's FOIA request from CBP.
3/27/2018
-
ICE FOIA Response Letter
Response letter to Knight's 8/7/2017 FOIA request from ICE.
3/7/2018
-
ICE Memo: Results from CTCEU Re-Vetting Initiative
Memorandum describing "noteworthy results from the CTCEU re-vetting initiative and/or the open source social media vetting." Though it does not include significant detail on the scope of such efforts, its "success stories" do include the visa-types and nationalities of the individuals featured. Only one of the success stories appears to reference an applicant rather than a current visa-holder.
3/7/2018
-
DOS Memo: Visa Resumption for Mission Turkey and Next Steps
Memorandum lifting visa restrictions on individuals from Turkey, almost entirely withheld.
11/9/2018
-
DOS Memo: Visa Resumption for Mission Turkey and Next Steps
Memorandum lifting visa restrictions on individuals from Turkey, almost entirely withheld.
6/28/2018