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

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 11, 2023 Decided September 3, 2024

No. 22-5153

AMARA EMUWA, ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

v.

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:20-cv-01756)

David L. Cleveland, Sr. argued the cause and filed the 

briefs for appellants.

Peter C. Pfaffenroth, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the 

cause for appellee. On the brief were Brian P. Hudak, Jane M. 

Lyons, and Derek S. Hammond, Assistant U.S. Attorneys. R. 

Craig Lawrence entered an appearance.

Before: KATSAS, CHILDS, and PAN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge KATSAS.

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KATSAS, Circuit Judge: Asylum officers of the United 

States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) 

interview applicants and make written recommendations about 

whether the agency should grant them asylum. We have held 

that the deliberative-process privilege protects these 

recommendations from disclosure. This appeal presents the 

question whether the foreseeable-harm provision of the 

Freedom of Information Act nonetheless requires disclosure. 

USCIS concluded that releasing the deliberative portions of the 

recommendations would foreseeably harm interests protected 

by the privilege. The district court upheld that determination, 

as do we.

I 

A 

FOIA requires federal agencies to make records publicly 

available upon request unless one of nine exemptions applies. 

See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A), (b). Exemption 5 protects “interagency 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.” Id. § 552(b)(5). This exemption 

incorporates privileges available to agencies in civil litigation, 

including the deliberative-process privilege. U.S. Fish & 

Wildlife Serv. v. Sierra Club, Inc., 592 U.S. 261, 263 (2021). 

That privilege shields documents “reflecting advisory 

opinions, recommendations, and deliberations” that agencies 

use to make decisions. Id. at 267 (cleaned up). The privilege 

ensures that “debate and candid consideration of alternatives 

within an agency” are not subject to public inspection. 

Machado Amadis v. Dep’t of State, 971 F.3d 364, 371 (D.C. 

Cir. 2020) (cleaned up); see also Dep’t of Interior v. Klamath 

Water Users Protective Ass’n, 532 U.S. 1, 8–9 (2001) 

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(deliberative-process privilege “rests on the obvious realization 

that officials will not communicate candidly among themselves 

if each remark is a potential item of discovery”).

In 2016, Congress amended FOIA to impose an additional 

requirement for agencies to withhold requested records. FOIA 

Improvement Act, Pub. L. No. 114–185 § 2, 130 Stat. 538, 539. 

Now, even if an exemption applies, the agency may withhold 

the record only if it “reasonably foresees that disclosure would 

harm an interest protected” by the exemption. 5 U.S.C. 

§ 552(a)(8)(A)(i)(I). Thus, to withhold records covered by

Exemption 5 through the deliberative-process privilege, an 

agency must show that releasing the specific records sought 

“‘would’ chill future internal discussions.” Machado Amadis, 

971 F.3d at 371. 

B 

The government may grant asylum to aliens who qualify 

as refugees. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(b)(1)(A). A refugee is someone 

who cannot return to his home country “because of persecution 

or a well-founded fear of persecution” on account of certain

protected categories. Id. § 1101(a)(42). 

USCIS, an agency within the Department of Homeland 

Security, adjudicates applications for asylum. USCIS asylum 

officers interview asylum applicants to determine their refugee 

status. 8 C.F.R. § 208.9. The asylum officer prepares a written 

assessment summarizing the interview, assessing the alien’s 

credibility, and making a recommendation whether to grant or 

deny asylum. J.A. 252–53, 309–11. The document is called

an Assessment to Grant or an Assessment to Refer, depending 

on whether the recommendation is to grant or deny asylum. 

Supervisors review these assessments in making the final 

agency decision. If USCIS denies asylum, it refers the alien’s 

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case to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), another 

DHS component agency, for the commencement of removal 

proceedings.

In Abtew v. DHS, 808 F.3d 895 (D.C. Cir. 2015), this 

Court held that the deliberative-process privilege protects

Assessments to Refer. See id. at 898–900. We concluded that 

the Assessment at issue was pre-decisional because it was 

“merely a recommendation to a supervisor” and deliberative 

because it was “written as part of the process by which the 

supervisor came to th[e] final decision.” Id. at 899. More 

generally, we explained that a “recommendation to a 

supervisor on a matter pending before the supervisor is a classic 

example of a deliberative document.” Id.

C

Four aliens who were denied asylum and an organization 

assisting them filed FOIA requests for copies of the aliens’ 

Assessments to Refer and associated documents. USCIS

released the factual portions of the Assessments but withheld 

portions containing analysis by the asylum officers. 

Specifically, it withheld “opinions, deliberations, and 

recommendation[s] regarding each applicant’s eligibility for 

asylum,” including analysis of the applicants’ evidence and 

“reasons for crediting or discrediting the veracity of the 

applicants’ statements.” J.A. 310–11. The aliens and the 

organization sued to obtain the full Assessments.

Before the district court, a USCIS official submitted a 

declaration explaining the agency’s basis for withholding. She

explained that the disputed Assessments to Refer were “drafted 

by asylum officers in order to explain the basis for their 

recommendations” to supervisors and that the withheld 

portions of the Assessments “explained the officer’s reasons 

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for recommending that asylum be denied, discussed legal 

justifications for a denial determination, and included other 

reasons to refer the case to ICE.” J.A. 252–53.

The district court granted summary judgment to the 

government. Applying Abtew, it held that the deliberativeprocess privilege covers the requested Assessments. Emuwa v.

DHS, No. 1:20-cv-1756, 2021 WL 2255305, at *4 (D.D.C. 

June 3, 2021). And applying Machado Amadis, it held that

USCIS had adequately shown that releasing the withheld 

portions of the Assessments would foreseeably harm USCIS’s

interest in receiving candid recommendations from its asylum 

officers. Id. at *8–9.

After the plaintiffs appealed, this Court decided Reporters

Committee for Freedom of the Press v. FBI, 3 F.4th 350 (D.C. 

Cir. 2021), which held that an agency had failed to show 

foreseeable harm from the release of certain documents 

protected by the deliberative-process privilege. Id. at 369–72. 

We then granted a consent motion to remand this case for 

further consideration. Emuwa v. DHS, No. 21-5131, 2021 WL 

8875652 (D.C. Cir. Nov. 12, 2021).

On remand, USCIS submitted a supplemental declaration

from Cynthia Munita, its Chief FOIA Officer, who elaborated 

on the agency’s assessment of foreseeable harm. She explained 

that the “adjudication of asylum applications” is a “sensitive” 

matter implicating national interests and sometimes provoking 

public controversy. J.A. 309. She confirmed that USCIS 

officers who interviewed the aliens prepared the Assessments 

at issue to recommend further action to their supervisors. Id.

at 310. Likewise, she confirmed that the withheld portions 

contained “candid impressions, opinions, and analyses of the 

evidence and ... the bases” for the recommendations. Id. She 

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explained that releasing the “specific pre-decisional 

deliberations” at issue “would interfere with USCIS’s ability to 

make sound judgments on asylum applications” because the 

line officers “would temper their discussions with the 

knowledge that their views and characterizations would be 

made public.” Id. at 311; see also id. (“disclosure of this 

information would cause asylum officers to no longer feel free 

to discuss their evaluations of evidence or their analysis of the 

asylum eligibility criteria in an open and frank manner”). She 

stressed the importance to USCIS of “candid evaluation by 

asylum officers.” Id. Finally, she elaborated that, in the 

specific context of asylum adjudications, “revealing the kinds 

of matters and information that the asylum officers considered 

... would allow bad actors to better fabricate evidence or 

testimony so that they might be granted asylum under false 

pretenses.” Id. at 312. And that concern “would further stifle 

the free flow of information between asylum officers and their 

supervisors.” Id.

The district court again granted summary judgment to

DHS; it held that the agency had adequately justified the claim

of foreseeable harm under the standards required by Machado 

Amadis and Reporters Committee. Emuwa v. DHS, No. 1:20-

cv-1756, 2022 WL 1451430, *1–5 (D.D.C. May 9, 2022). 

The plaintiffs appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 

U.S.C. § 1291. 

II

The parties agree that the deliberative-process privilege 

applies to the four requested Assessments. The only contested 

question is whether DHS adequately showed that disclosure of 

their analysis portions, including cited source material, would 

foreseeably harm interests the privilege protects. In FOIA

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cases, as in others, we review summary judgments de novo. 

Machado Amadis, 971 F.3d at 368.

A 

In Machado Amadis and Reporters Committee, this Court 

explained how FOIA’s foreseeable-harm requirement applies 

to records protected by the deliberative-process privilege. The 

requirement prevents an agency from withholding requested 

records unless it “reasonably foresees that disclosure would 

harm an interest protected by” the relevant exemption. 5 

U.S.C. § 552(a)(8)(A)(i)(I). Machado Amadis explained that 

the agency therefore must consider the specific “information at 

issue” in the case. 971 F.3d at 371. And it must show that 

disclosure of the requested information “would” chill future 

internal agency deliberations, not simply that it “could” do so. 

See id. We held that the Department of Justice had adequately 

justified withholding the deliberative portions of its “Blitz 

Forms,” which are recommendations from subordinate 

attorneys to superiors regarding the handling of pending FOIA 

requests. Id. at 370. In crediting the agency’s prediction that

full release of the Blitz Forms would chill candid advice, we 

stressed that “recommendations from subordinates to superiors 

lie at the core of the deliberative-process privilege.” Id. 

Reporters Committee likewise explained that “what is 

needed is a focused and concrete demonstration of why 

disclosure of the particular type of material at issue will, in the 

specific context of the agency action at issue, actually impede 

those same agency deliberations going forward.” 3 F.4th at 

370. We explained it was not enough to simply assert “the 

generic rationale for the deliberative process privilege itself,” 

without also explaining “why actual harm would foreseeably 

result from release of the specific type of material at issue.” Id.

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at 370–71. We held that the FBI declarations failed to satisfy 

these requirements as a general matter, but we upheld 

withholding certain communications where the foreseeability 

of harm was “manifest” from the “very context and purpose” 

of the communications. Id. at 371–72.

Measured against these benchmarks, Munita’s 

supplemental declaration adequately demonstrates foreseeable 

harm. As explained above, she confirmed that the withheld 

material consisted of recommendations from subordinates to 

supervisors on whether to grant pending asylum applications,

J.A. 309–10, which are a “classic example” of material 

protected by the deliberative-process privilege, Abtew, 808 

F.3d at 899. Her analysis focused on why release of the 

“withheld portions of the four assessments at issue” (not 

privileged information in general) “would” (not could) 

“interfere with USCIS’s ability” to receive candid advice from 

its line asylum officers. J.A. 310–11; see Machado Amadis, 

971 F.3d at 371. And she laid out contextual considerations 

tending to support the reasonableness of that judgment, 

including the “sensitive” nature of asylum adjudications and 

the specific concern about facilitating asylum fraud. J.A. 309, 

312; see Reps. Comm., 3 F.4th at 372. The affidavit thus 

showed “a link between the specified harm”—reduced candor 

by line asylum officers making recommendations to 

superiors—“and the specific information” withheld—the 

officials’ analyses of applicants’ interviews. Reps. Comm., 3 

F.4th at 371 (cleaned up). And this “chilling of candid advice” 

is the precise harm that the deliberative-process privilege seeks 

to prevent. Machado Amadis, 971 F.3d at 371.

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B

The plaintiffs’ counterarguments, focused on the quality 

of the Munita declaration and on USCIS’s release of allegedly 

similar materials, are unpersuasive.

1

The plaintiffs raise a host of challenges to the 

thoroughness and credibility of the Munita declaration. To 

begin, they contend that the declaration was not based on 

“personal knowledge,” as required by Federal Rule of Civil 

Procedure 56(c)(4). But Munita averred that the statements in 

her declaration were “based on my personal knowledge, my 

review of the relevant documents kept by USCIS in the course 

of ordinary business, and upon information provided to me by 

other USCIS employees in the course of my official duties.” 

J.A. 309. On its face, the declaration confirms that Munita 

reviewed the four Assessments at issue. Moreover, we have 

held that government officers, in submitting declarations under 

Rule 56(c)(4), may rely on information obtained from 

subordinates in the course of performing their official duties. 

See, e.g., DiBacco v. Dep’t of the Army, 926 F.3d 827, 833 

(D.C. Cir. 2019); Cont’l Cas. Co. v. Am. Sec. Corp., 443 F.2d 

649, 651 (D.C. Cir. 1970) (per curiam).

The plaintiffs object that we sometimes have demanded 

further detail on how the declarant learned the relevant 

information. But their cases turned on specific concerns about

the seeming lack of connection between the information and 

the declarant’s ordinary official duties. See, e.g., Londrigan v.

FBI, 670 F.2d 1164, 1168, 1174–75 (D.C. Cir. 1981) (thoughts 

of people interviewed by other FBI agents twenty years prior); 

Campbell v. DOJ, 164 F.3d 20, 35 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (“events

that occurred more than 30 years ago”); Shaw v. FBI, 749 F.2d 

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58, 63 n.2 (D.C. Cir. 1984) (affiant “did not claim any personal 

participation in the investigation” at issue). This case presents 

no such concerns: Munita has worked at USCIS since 2008, 

has served as a line “Immigration Services Officer,” and now 

is the agency’s Chief FOIA Officer. J.A. 308. We have no 

reason to doubt her qualifications or knowledge to provide the 

supplemental declaration. 

The plaintiffs object that Munita did not discuss the age, 

content, and character of the Assessments at issue. But as

explained above, she plainly considered their content and 

character in making her foreseeable-harm assessment. As for 

the age of requested documents, we held in National Security 

Archive v. CIA, 752 F.3d 460 (D.C. Cir. 2014), that the 

deliberative-process privilege does not vanish with the passage 

of time. Id. at 464. Congress responded by inserting into FOIA 

a 25-year limit for withholding documents based on the 

deliberative-process privilege. FOIA Improvement Act § 2, 

130 Stat. at 540 (codified at 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5)). But here, 

the disputed Assessments were all created less than eight years 

ago. We can thus discern no reason why Munita, in addressing 

the documents at issue, had to specifically discuss their age.

The plaintiffs object that Munita failed to address each of 

the four Assessments individually. But in Reporters 

Committee, we held that agencies may show foreseeable harm 

“on a category-by-category basis rather than a document-bydocument basis,” so long as each category contains “like 

records” and the threat of harm is “independently demonstrated 

for each category.” 3 F.4th at 369. Here the declaration made 

clear that there were no material differences among the four 

disputed Assessments, which summarized asylum interviews, 

assessed the applicants’ credibility and evidence, and made 

recommendations to superiors. J.A. 309–11. Having 

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established a relevant category of like documents, Munita had 

no obligation to address each document individually.

The plaintiffs object that Munita failed to conduct a lineby-line review of the withheld materials to determine whether 

any portion of them could be safely released. But she

confirmed that her office “review[ed]” the redactions to 

“consider[] whether any information could be segregated and 

released without causing a foreseeable harm to the agency.” 

J.A. 312. And she explained the agency’s view that “no further

segregation” was possible without disclosing such information. 

Id. at 312–13. USCIS thus did conduct the segregability 

analysis required for assessing foreseeable harm. See 5 U.S.C. 

§ 552(a)(8)(A)(ii); Leopold v. DOJ, 94 F.4th 33, 37–38 (D.C. 

Cir. 2024). The plaintiffs further assert that the Assessments’ 

discussion of source materials could be safely segregated and 

released. But discussion of source material was part-andparcel of the “analysis, opinions, deliberations, and 

recommendations” contained in the Assessments and 

addressed in the declaration. J.A. 310–11. And revealing how 

asylum officers assessed those sources would facilitate asylum 

fraud. Id. at 312. Even the plaintiffs’ complaint acknowledges 

that “[i]f applicants know what sources are good, they can 

tailor their own research accordingly.” Id. at 21. In short, 

releasing the sources underlying the analysis would cause a 

similar harm to the deliberative process as releasing the 

analysis itself.

Finally, the plaintiffs highlight what they characterize as 

significant errors in the declaration. First, they point to 

Munita’s statement that asylum officers expect Assessments to 

be reviewed “only by those within USCIS,” J.A. 310, even 

though they are sometimes shared with other government 

officials. But far from suggesting wide dissemination, the 

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evidence indicates restricted access by other immigration or 

law-enforcement agencies for specific operational needs. Id. at 

228–30. That does not materially undermine the agency’s 

concern that making Assessments publicly available upon 

request would foreseeably chill agency deliberations. Second, 

the plaintiffs highlight a statement in the declaration that 

Assessments contain the “internal deliberations” of a 

supervisory asylum officer as well as the line, interviewing 

officer. Id. at 312. This minor error, on an issue that is 

irrelevant to the concern about chilling the candor of the line 

officers, does not undermine the overall credibility of the 

declaration. See SafeCard Servs., Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d 1197,

1202 (D.C. Cir. 1991) (looking past immaterial errors in

agency declaration).

2

The plaintiffs raise further arguments based on the release 

of other, assertedly similar immigration documents, as well as 

the occasional release of Assessments to Refer. They contend 

that these various releases undercut USCIS’s assessment of 

foreseeable harm in this case.

First, the plaintiffs point to the routine release of three 

different kinds of asylum documents—notices of intent to 

deny, notices of intent to terminate, and records of 

determination. But USCIS prepares these documents for 

release to the affected alien: A notice of intent to deny informs 

an asylum applicant lawfully present in the United States that 

USCIS intends to deny the application and offers him the 

opportunity to submit additional information. 8 C.F.R. 

§ 103.2(b)(8)(iii)–(iv). A notice of intent to terminate performs 

a similar function for individuals previously granted asylum 

but found no longer eligible for it. Id. § 208.24(c). And a

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record of determination informs an unlawfully present alien of 

an asylum officer’s determination as to whether the alien has 

shown a credible fear of persecution and may progress to 

further asylum proceedings. Id. § 208.30(g)(1). The release of 

these final notices does not undermine the need to protect the 

confidentiality of pre-decisional documents written for 

consumption within the agency itself. The plaintiffs object that 

these three kinds of immigration documents publicly convey 

grounds for adverse asylum decisions, as do Assessments to 

Refer. Again, though, the need to publicly justify a final 

agency decision does not undercut the importance of protecting 

internal deliberations about those same decisions before they 

are made. See, e.g., NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 

132, 151–52 (1975).

For similar reasons, the plaintiffs get no mileage from 

USCIS’s release, in a subset of removal proceedings, of various 

record documents and written decisions denying asylum. The 

plaintiffs note that aliens placed in certain removal proceedings 

are entitled to receive the “record of proceedings” from the 

asylum interview, which includes the decision denying asylum, 

the asylum application, all supporting information provided by 

the applicant, comments provided to USCIS by other agencies, 

and “any other unclassified information considered by the 

asylum officer.” 8 C.F.R. §§ 208.9(f), 1240.17(a), (c). But the 

“record of proceedings” does not include internal 

recommendations to the decisionmaker: “[P]redecisional and 

deliberative documents are not part of the administrative record 

to begin with,” just as a law clerk’s bench memorandum would 

not be part of the record on which a judicial decision is based. 

Oceana, Inc. v. Ross, 920 F.3d 855, 865 (D.C. Cir. 2019)

(cleaned up).

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Finally, the plaintiffs point to the past release of 

Assessments to Refer. But “an agency does not forfeit a FOIA 

exemption simply by releasing similar documents in other 

contexts.” Abtew, 808 F.3d at 900. The plaintiffs allege that

the Immigration and Naturalization Service, USCIS’s 

predecessor agency, regularly released Assessments requested 

under FOIA between 1998 and 2002, and that USCIS did so 

from 2003 to 2005. But the record contains fewer than ten such 

releases. Moreover, an alleged practice started by a different 

agency and discontinued some two decades ago says little 

about the sensitivity of—and concomitant need to protect 

deliberations about—asylum adjudications today. In the past 

two decades, the plaintiffs cite only two instances when USCIS 

released Assessments to Refer—one to moot out a potentially 

difficult FOIA case in 2020, J.A. 350–55, and one to impeach

the credibility of an alien’s testimony in a removal proceeding, 

id. at 362–68. Those instances simply show that the 

government is sometimes willing to suffer the consequences of 

releasing Assessments in order to achieve some competing 

institutional objective. That hardly suggests that the routine 

release of Assessments through FOIA would not foreseeably 

chill internal agency deliberations.

III

For these reasons, we affirm the summary judgment for

DHS.

So ordered.

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