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January 2026
Greetings and happy new year. The first installment of Immigration Disclosures of 2026 highlights the addition of new audio features in our Family Separation Project, the Council’s blog about alleged tactics implemented by USCIS to avoid a Court order on FOIA compliance, our Deputy Legal Director’s appearance on a panel with The New Republic , and our latest FOIA request on USCIS’s updated guidance on social media vetting.
Initial Disclosures:
* The Council recently added new audio features to our FOIA project “A Look Back at the Family Separation Policy - The Struggle to Uncover the Truth Behind the Trump Administration's Wrongdoings.” The project now features a powerful essay from Aura Bogado, a journalist who reported on family separation issues, narrated by award-winning actress Liza Colón-Zayas. We also added an interview with journalist Lomi Kriel, the first reporter to write about family separations in 2017 in El Paso. Listen to the new content here [[link removed]] .
* On December 19, 2025, Government Executive published a letter [[link removed]] by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services whistleblower alleging the agency implemented policies to reject certain FOIA requests for A-Files to reduce the number of requests it processed. The whistleblower letter, sent to Congress, says that this reduction was to avoid the compliance requirements set by the Court’s order in Nightingale v. USCIS, a case filed by the Council, the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the law office of Stacy Tolchin, to ensure noncitizens and their attorneys can obtain A-Files within the time required by the FOIA. Read our blog here [[link removed]] .
* The Council’s Deputy Legal Director of Transparency, Raul Pinto, spoke on a panel organized by The New Republic on January 6. The panel discussed ICE’s enforcement and detention tactics, and how transparency can be the starting point to reform. Check out the discussion here [[link removed]] .
The Council and Just Futures Law File FOIA Request to Get More Information on How USCIS Defines “Anti-Americanism.”
On December 22, 2025, the Council and Just Futures Law filed a FOIA request to gain more information about U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) August 19, 2025, policy that would classify “anti-Americanism” and “anti-Semitic” expression as negative discretionary factors in the adjudication of immigration benefits.
In the first few months of his second term, President Trump issued two executive orders declaring that the United States “must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles...” Executive Order 14188, titled “Additional Measures To Combat Anti-Semitism,” specifically required the heads of certain government agencies, including DHS, to send reports on how they will work with universities to identify activities of noncitizens they deem to be “security and foreign policy related inadmissibility grounds.”
In line with these executive orders, on April 9, 2025, USCIS announced that it would begin considering “anti-Semitic activity” on social media as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests. Shortly thereafter, USCIS claimed also to have adopted social media vetting for “anti-Americanism,” greatly expanding the potential content that could act as a negative discretionary factor in immigration benefit applications. In August, USCIS updated its guidance on the use of discretion in the adjudication of certain immigration benefits.
However, USCIS has failed to provide a concrete definition as to what constitutes “anti-Americanism.” In publicly available content, the agency referenced a provision of the Immigration Nationality Act from 1952, which barred affiliations with communism or groups advocating violent overthrow of the government. This lack of a modern definition could allow immigration officers to make decisions based on their subjective interpretation of a broad phrase rather than a standardized measure.
To gain more information about the updated guidance, the Council and Just Futures Law requested policies, directives, training materials, standard operating procedures on the April 9, 2025 USCIS Social Media Screening Announcement, data on individuals who are subject to a social media search, and legal memoranda concerning the legal implications of denying immigration benefits based on their speech, beliefs, or associations.
Why does this matter?
* The lack of public information about what constitutes “anti-Americanism” allows immigration officers broad authority in applying negative discretionary factors in adjudicating immigration benefit applications. This can lead to a lack of standard implementation of the policy. Access to these records will allow the public to see how USCIS is making these determinations.
* Students and professors have expressed confusion about the new social media guidelines. Many worry about the impact these policies may have on their academic activities. Gaining access to these records will allow directly impacted individuals more clarity on how they will be impacted by the new policy.
Read more here
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