Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-02088/USCOURTS-ca7-19-02088-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 895
Nature of Suit: Freedom of Information Act of 1974
Cause of Action: 

---

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

No. 19-2088 

NATIONAL IMMIGRANT JUSTICE CENTER, 

Plaintiff-Appellant, 

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 

Defendant-Appellee. 

____________________ 

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

No. 1:12-cv-4691 — Andrea R. Wood, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED FEBRUARY 14, 2020 — DECIDED MARCH 23, 2020 

____________________ 

Before RIPPLE, SYKES, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. 

SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Receiving confidential advice is essential to sound decision-making. The law of privilege owes 

its existence to that reality and finds application in many settings, including decision-making within the executive branch 

of our national government. Consider the setting front and 

center in this appeal—immigration. Congress has empowered the Attorney General with enforcement, rulemaking, and 

adjudicatory authority. The exercise of that power is of great 

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consequence on many fronts, including in the direction of the 

nation’s immigration policy and the lives of many noncitizen 

immigrants. Those very same reasons explain why the Attorney General, as part of exercising the responsibility conferred 

by Congress, will seek and receive confidential input from a 

range of advisors within the Department of Justice. 

Unsettled by decisions made by Attorneys General across 

three presidential administrations, the National Immigrant 

Justice Center invoked the Freedom of Information Act and 

sought access to all records of communications to and from 

the Attorney General in certain immigration appeals certified 

for executive decision. The Department of Justice honored aspects of the requests but withheld many responsive documents on the basis of FOIA’s exemption for communications 

protected by the deliberative process privilege. The district 

court found the withholding proper, and so do we. To conclude otherwise would chill the deliberations that department 

and agency heads like the Attorney General undertake in confidence to execute the weighty responsibilities of their offices. 

I 

A 

The National Immigrant Justice Center provides immigration legal services for low-income noncitizens. To advance its 

mission, NIJC lodged a FOIA request with the Department of 

Justice for communications related to the Attorney General’s 

decisions in certain immigration appeals. Some background 

on immigration removal proceedings and the Attorney General’s role in them puts in context NIJC’s request and our ensuing analysis. 

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When the government believes that a noncitizen is in the 

United States without permission, the Department of 

Homeland Security may initiate removal proceedings in 

immigration court. The immigration court is not an Article III 

federal court, but instead resides within the executive 

branch—specifically, within the Department of Justice’s 

Executive Office for Immigration Review. See 8 C.F.R. § 

1003.14. Either party can appeal an immigration judge’s 

removal decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals or BIA. 

See id. § 1003.38. The BIA likewise resides within DOJ. See id. 

DHS attorneys are tasked with defending and pursuing 

appeals before the BIA. 

As the head of DOJ, the Attorney General has discretionary authority to review any BIA decision. See 8 C.F.R. 

§ 1003.1(h). This review happens through a process known as 

certification. See id. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i). Upon certifying a case, 

the Attorney General proceeds to review the Board’s removal 

decision and issues a binding and precedential opinion. See 

id. § 1003.1(g), (h). The Attorney General does not do this 

work in isolation, and instead may tap DOJ’s full resources 

for advice and assistance. Indeed, federal regulations recognize that the Attorney General may consult with attorneys 

from across the Department, including the Office of Legal 

Counsel, the Office of Immigration Litigation, and the Office 

of the Solicitor General as part of the deliberative decisionmaking process within DOJ. See 28 C.F.R. §§ 0.20(a), (d), 

0.25(a), 0.45(k). 

After the removal proceedings have run their course in the 

executive branch, the immigrant can petition a federal circuit 

court for review of a BIA or Attorney General decision. See 8 

U.S.C. § 1252. At that stage, attorneys from DOJ’s Office of 

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Immigration Litigation represent the government. See 28 

C.F.R. § 0.45(k). Attorneys from the Office of the Solicitor General fulfill that responsibility if a case proceeds to the Supreme 

Court. See id. § 0.20(a). 

B 

In December 2010, NIJC submitted to DOJ a FOIA request 

for records of all communications between the Attorney General, the Office of the Attorney General, and any lawyer in the 

Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation or the Office of 

the Solicitor General related to 11 certified cases decided between 2002 and 2009. DOJ produced about 1,000 pages of documents but withheld over 4,000 more on the basis of exemptions Congress provided in FOIA. Among the exemptions 

DOJ invoked was Exemption 5, which allows the withholding 

of agency memoranda not subject to disclosure through the 

discovery process in the ordinary course of litigation. See 5 

U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). Courts have interpreted Exemption 5 to encompass the attorney work product, attorney client, and deliberative process privileges. See NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 

421 U.S. 132, 149 (1975); see also King v. IRS, 684 F.2d 517, 519 

(7th Cir. 1982). This appeal centers around 300 responsive 

documents withheld on the basis of the deliberative process 

privilege. We have no occasion to discuss documents withheld on other grounds. 

NIJC filed suit challenging DOJ’s withholdings and in 

time the parties cross-moved for summary judgment. DOJ 

shouldered the burden of demonstrating the propriety of its 

invocation of Exemption 5. See Patterson v. IRS, 56 F.3d 832, 

836 (7th Cir. 1995) (explaining that at summary judgment, the 

government must provide affidavits describing the documents and its reason for withholding them “with sufficient 

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No. 19-2088 5

specificity to demonstrate that material withheld is logically 

within the domain of the exemption claimed” (quoting PHE, 

Inc. v. Dep’t of Justice, 983 F.2d 248, 250 (D.C. Cir. 1993))). To 

carry that burden, DOJ submitted affidavits detailing the 

search for responsive documents as well as a so-called 

Vaughn index—a log listing and describing each document 

withheld (in whole or part) from production. See id. at 839 

n.11. 

DOJ’s Vaughn index itemized hundreds of documents 

(mainly email correspondence) reflecting discussions between attorneys working within different offices of issues related to immigration cases under consideration or on certification for decision by the Attorney General. A few examples 

provide a more detailed flavor: 

 A memorandum from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General to Attorney General 

John Ashcroft about five BIA decisions to 

consider certifying; 

 Emails between attorneys from the Office of 

Immigration Litigation, the Office of Legal 

Policy, and the Offices of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General about 

an amicus curiae brief received in the Matter 

of Silva-Trevino before Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued his opinion; and 

 Emails between attorneys from the Offices of 

the Attorney General and Solicitor General 

commenting on a draft order of Attorney 

General Eric Holder vacating a previous 

opinion in the Matter of Compean. 

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6 No. 19-2088 

NIJC did not quibble with DOJ’s representations that the 

withheld documents contained deliberative communications. 

Rather, NIJC challenged DOJ’s withholding on the ground 

that the documents also contained ex parte communications 

outside the scope of Exemption 5. 

It takes some untangling to explain how NIJC sees the 

withheld documents as containing ex parte communications. 

NIJC starts with the assertion that the DOJ attorneys’ eventual 

litigation role taints the advice they provide the Attorney 

General at the certification stage. “[P]retending these offices 

can set aside their adversarial interests when advising the Attorney General ignores reality,” NIJC urges, because removal 

proceedings almost always end in federal court litigation 

where those exact same attorneys are opposite the immigrant. 

Put most directly, “[b]ecause those offices may end up litigating against the immigrant in federal court, their communications with the Attorney General must be disclosed” as ex parte

communications. NIJC insists that any other conclusion affords the noncitizen a disadvantage in litigation because the 

DOJ attorneys will have contributed to the substance of the 

Attorney General’s decision in ways that can have a substantial and detrimental effect on the immigrant’s ability to remain in the United States. So, as NIJC would have it, the only 

way to level the playing field—to achieve fairness and avoid 

bias—is to view the DOJ attorney advice as ex parte communications outside the protection of Exemption 5. 

The district court rejected NIJC’s position and concluded 

that Exemption 5 applied. The withheld documents did not 

contain ex parte communications, the court reasoned, because 

the Office of Immigration Litigation and Solicitor General attorneys do not hold interests adverse to the noncitizen at the 

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stage of a removal proceeding at which the Attorney General 

certifies a case for decision. To the contrary, at that stage all 

DOJ attorneys “were simply groups within the same agency 

as the Attorney General, giving advice.” 

NIJC now appeals. 

III 

A 

Congress enacted the Freedom of Information Act to “ensure an informed citizenry” and to “hold the governors accountable to the governed.” Rubman v. U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Servs., 800 F.3d 381, 386 (7th Cir. 2015). The enactment favors disclosure: federal agencies must produce each 

and every responsive record unless it fits within a statutory 

exemption. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B); see also Mead Data 

Cent., Inc. v. U.S. Depʹt of Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 259 (D.C. Cir. 

1977) (“Where there is a balance to be struck, Congress and 

the courts have stacked the scales in favor of disclosure and 

against exemption.”). 

This appeal revolves around Exemption 5. By its terms, 

this exemption authorizes the withholding of “inter-agency 

or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be 

available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation 

with the agency.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). As the Supreme Court 

recognized in Sears—a case decided nine years after FOIA’s 

enactment in 1966—Congress intended the statute’s exemptions to mirror civil discovery privileges. See 421 U.S. at 149. 

The Court therefore recognized that Exemption 5 incorporates the deliberative process privilege. See id. at 150; see also 

EPA v. Mink, 410 U.S. 73, 86 (1973) (explaining the “recognized 

rule” that confidential agency advisory opinions were 

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privileged and therefore ordinarily exempt from production 

in civil discovery absent a showing of hardship). 

The deliberative process privilege, as its name implies, allows an agency to withhold “all papers which reflect the 

agency’s group thinking in the process of working out its policy and determining what its law shall be.” Sears, 421 U.S. at 

153. The privilege “prevent[s] injury to the quality of agency 

decisions.” Id. at 151. Or, as the D.C. Circuit has put the same 

point, the privilege serves the important purpose of facilitating “frank discussion of legal and policy issues.” Wolfe v. 

HHS, 839 F.2d 768, 773 (D.C. Cir. 1988) (en banc); see also Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Dep’t of Energy, 412 F.3d 125, 129 (D.C. Cir. 

2005) (explaining that the “inclusion [of the deliberative process privilege] in the [FOIA] statute ‘reflects the legislative 

judgment that the quality of administrative decision-making 

would be seriously undermined if agencies were forced to 

“operate in a fishbowl” because the full and frank exchange 

of views on legal or policy matters would be impossible’” 

(quoting Tax Analysts v. IRS, 117 F.3d 607, 617 (D.C. Cir. 

1997))). The privilege roots itself in “the obvious realization 

that officials will not communicate candidly among themselves if each remark is a potential item of discovery and front 

page news[.]” Dep’t of Interior v. Klamath Water Users Protective 

Ass’n, 532 U.S. 1, 8–9 (2001). 

The privilege is not unlimited, however. To the contrary—

and in full alignment with the Supreme Court’s repeated admonition to construe FOIA exemptions with a “narrow compass,” see id. at 8—we insist on the government making a twofold showing to support the withholding of a record based on 

the deliberative process privilege. First, the document must 

be pre-decisional, meaning that it must be “generated before

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the adoption of an agency policy.” Tax Analysts, 117 F.3d at 

616 (internal citations omitted). Second, the record in question 

must contain deliberative communications and therefore “reflect the give-and-take of the consultative process.” Id.; see 

also Enviro Tech Intʹl, Inc. v. EPA, 371 F.3d 370, 375 (7th Cir. 

2004) (explaining that documents were deliberative because 

they reflected “the internal dialogue at the EPA” regarding a 

proposed rule). 

The Federal Reporter contains many examples of courts 

(including our own) sustaining an agency’s invocation of deliberative process privilege in response to a FOIA request. See, 

e.g., Enviro Tech, 371 F.3d at 375 (allowing the withholding of 

draft documents and internal recommendations related to a 

new EPA regulation to limit workplace exposure to a toxin); 

Abtew v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., 808 F.3d 895, 899 (D.C. 

Cir. 2015) (upholding withholding of DHS asylum interviewer’s report to supervisor assessing asylee’s credibility 

and consistency before making a decision on asylum application because “[a] recommendation to a supervisor on a matter 

pending before the supervisor is a classic example of a deliberative document”); Elec. Frontier Found. v. Dep’t of Justice, 739 

F.3d 1, 9–10 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (concluding that a legal opinion 

prepared by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel for the FBI about 

a policy of obtaining certain telephone records was protected 

by deliberative process privilege); Natʹl Sec. Archive v. CIA, 

752 F.3d 460, 463 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (affirming the invocation of 

deliberative process privilege to justify withholding of CIA 

historian’s draft of the fifth volume on the Bay of Pigs invasion); Natʹl Wildlife Fedʹn v. U.S. Forest Serv., 861 F.2d 1114, 

1120 (9th Cir. 1988) (determining that the deliberative process 

privilege supported withholding the U.S. Forest Service’s 

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draft forest management plans because they were “merely 

working drafts subject to revision”). 

B 

Our cases are foggy on the standard under which we review a district court’s determination at summary judgment 

that a particular FOIA exemption authorized the withholding 

of a document. In some cases, we have said that we review for 

clear error because the procedural quirks of FOIA litigation 

(in which the non-moving party often knows little about the 

requested documents) require extra deference to district 

courts. See, e.g., Enviro Tech, 371 F.3d at 374 (applying clear 

error review); see also Rubman, 800 F.3d at 388 (echoing much 

the same reasoning to support a deferential review). Yet in 

other cases we found no reason to depart from the de novo

standard of review that ordinarily applies when reviewing 

summary judgment decisions. See, e.g., Matter of Wade, 969 

F.2d 241, 245 (7th Cir. 1992). We are not alone in recognizing 

this lack of clarity. See Higgs v. U.S. Park Police, 933 F.3d 897, 

903 (7th Cir. 2019) (noting a lack of consensus among the circuits on the standard of review applicable in FOIA cases). 

We need not settle the question, for this appeal presents 

neither disputed facts nor any of the special considerations 

sometimes present in FOIA litigation. See Rubman, 800 F.3d at 

388–89. The district court required from DOJ a detailed log of 

the documents withheld, which provides all the factual context necessary to decide the legal question on appeal: whether 

Exemption 5 authorized the withholding of the documents 

itemized on its Vaughn index. So we proceed de novo by taking 

a fresh look at whether DOJ carried its burden to justify withholding the documents on the basis of the deliberative process 

privilege. 

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The district court got it exactly right in answering yes. Indeed, the challenged documents are paradigmatic examples 

of records embodying deliberative communications. Recall 

what NIJC sought—all communications to and from the Attorney General or the Office of the Attorney General discussing the pros and cons of certifying a case for decision, commenting on different lines of reasoning supporting a particular decisional path, and offering suggestions on draft opinions. The documents, in short, embody precisely the type of 

legal and policy discussions and exchanges of ideas at the 

heart of the deliberative process privilege. Exemption 5 exists 

to authorize DOJ’s withholding of these documents from public disclosure. 

NIJC does not dispute that the documents fall within the 

ambit of the deliberative process privilege. It instead renews 

the invitation it extended to the district court to view the documents as embodying both pre-decisional discussions and ex 

parte communications, and to conclude that the presence of 

the latter removes the records from the protection otherwise 

conferred by Exemption 5. The DOJ attorneys from the Office 

of Immigration Litigation and the Office of the Solicitor General, NIJC reasons, may ultimately serve as opposing counsel 

if the noncitizen does not prevail before the BIA and then appeals to a federal court. Because of this arrangement, NIJC 

posits, the attorneys might “attempt to advance an adverse interest before the Attorney General” during the certification 

decision-making process—a reality that could result in a disadvantage to a noncitizen who may later face the same DOJ 

attorney in court proceedings. 

NIJC’s position misses the mark. At the time that the Attorney General certifies a case and chooses to consult with 

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attorneys in DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation or Office 

of the Solicitor General, no litigation is pending in any federal 

court. The removal proceeding is ongoing solely within DOJ, 

awaiting a decision by the Attorney General. In no way are 

the attorneys—at that point in the multi-step process that can 

result in an immigrant’s removal—advising and assisting the 

Attorney General adverse to the noncitizen. Attorneys assisting an adjudicator do not engage in ex parte communications 

when performing their duties. 

NIJC sees this reasoning as artificial and unduly formalistic because Office of Immigration Litigation and Solicitor General attorneys cannot be neutral advisors one minute and adversarial litigators the next. “More often than not,” NIJC tells 

us, “when an Attorney General certifies a BIA decision for review, the noncitizen loses, making it readily apparent that [attorneys from the Offices of Immigration Litigation and the Solicitor General] would be adverse to the noncitizen going forward.” 

This argument fails on its terms, for NIJC recognizes that 

DOJ attorneys become adversaries in removal proceedings 

only when a dispute leaves the Department and moves to the 

judicial branch. That is precisely what NIJC acknowledges 

when it points to adversity “going forward.” And it is that exact reality that confirms the district court was right to sustain 

DOJ’s withholding of the challenged documents: at no point 

do Office of Immigration Litigation or Solicitor General attorneys represent the Department in an adversarial proceeding 

before the Attorney General. Put another way, the unfairness 

that the ex parte communications doctrine seeks to prevent—

namely, that one party has the judge’s ear while his adversary 

lacks the same opportunity, see Drobny v. Comm’r of Internal 

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Revenue, 113 F.3d 670, 670 (7th Cir. 1997)—does not apply 

here. 

Nor does NIJC offer any limiting principle. It falls flat to 

insist this case presents concerns unique in the immigration 

context. Today’s administrative state is no small enterprise. 

Nor is DOJ alone in Washington in exercising rulemaking, 

enforcement, and adjudicatory authority to fulfill 

congressionally-mandated responsibilities. See Martin v. 

Occupational Safety & Health Review Commʹn, 499 U.S. 144, 151 

(1991); see also RICHARD J. PIERCE, JR. & KRISTIN E. HICKMAN,

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW TREATISE § 1.1 (6th ed.) (recognizing the 

expanse of today’s administrative state and underscoring the 

broad range of responsibilities and decisions committed to 

administrative agencies). 

We see no principled way to decide today’s case in NIJC’s 

favor and not undermine the confidentiality on which sound 

decision-making depends within any number of other agencies and departments. It is commonplace for agency and department lawyers to advise policymakers on specific matters 

and later to provide litigation advice when the same matter 

finds its way into court in some way, shape, or form. NIJC has 

offered nothing to assuage this concern, and indeed its complete silence on the point speaks volumes. 

For these reasons, we AFFIRM. 

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