December 2025

Greetings. This installment of immigration disclosures highlights a blog with court-by-court analysis on adjudication outcomes of oral motions to dismiss and a new FOIA request asking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) resume posting administrative appeal office decisions on its website. Also, check-out our Instagram reel breaking down some key concepts of the Council’s Family Separation Platform launched in October and our discussion on NPR’s 1A on secrecy and lack of transparency under the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Initial Disclosures:

On November 20, the Council published a court-by-court analysis on adjudication outcomes of oral motions to dismiss from May 20 to July 28 following a May policy change to identify noncitizens in removal proceedings, and coordinate their arrests in immigration court with ICE detention officers. Back in July, the Council received data from USCIS through a FOIA request on all motions to dismiss filed between May to July 2025. In October, we published a blog showing that dismissals increased significantly after ICE circulated this policy change. While the October analysis showed that judges were largely complying with this tactic despite violating immigration court procedures, this new breakdown demonstrates that certain immigration court locations did not rubber stamp those dismissals. Read our court-by-court analysis here, and read analysis on nationwide trends here. And check out these blogs featured in the Minnesota Tribune and Latin Times.
On November 18, we posted an Instagram reel breaking down some of our findings from the Council’s new platform featuring records from the zero-tolerance policy that led to family separations. The platform, which features documents produced as a result of the Council’s years-long FOIA litigation, details the role journalists and oversight agencies played in informing the public of the policy’s atrocities, provides viewers a first-hand experience into the government’s poor documentation of separations, and notably features audio by Corey Stoll who takes viewers along the journey by reading key emails from government agencies. Take a look at our Platform here and watch our Instagram reel here.
On November 20, Deputy Director of Transparency, Raul Pinto, made an appearance on NPR’s 1A and discussed the secrecy surrounding the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Among topics of discussion were the increase in 287(g) agreements and laws surrounding masked federal agents and unmarked vehicles. Listen to the full recording here.

The Council, Legal Aid Society, and the National Immigration Project File a FOIA Request with USCIS to Resume Posting Administrative Appeals Office Decisions on its Website

On November 19, 2025, the Council, the Legal Aid Society, and the National Immigration Project filed a FOIA request with USCIS requesting the agency to resume posting Administrative Appeal Office decisions on its website. When USCIS, the agency that adjudicates applications for immigration benefits, erroneously denies a noncitizen a certain benefit, the noncitizen can appeal the decision with the AAO. The AAO, a subagency within USCIS, then reviews these appeals and adjudicates them.

Typically, AAO would post its decisions on a USCIS webpage. The website would allow practitioners and the public at large to search and review past decisions, and gain insight into how the agency decides these appeals.

In March 2025, the AAO abruptly stopped posting these decisions despite the fact that their website still states that decisions will be posted within one month after they are issued. After months of silence, the American Immigration Council, along with the Legal Aid Society, and the National Immigration Project filed a request under FOIA with USCIS asking the agency to publish decisions issued by the AAO since March, and to resume publishing non-precedent decisions on the agency’s website.

The AAO non-precedent decisions are final opinions under the FOIA’s proactive disclosure provisions. This requires agencies to publish these types of records on agencies’ electronic reading rooms for public review. The request also sought information as to whether the AAO implemented new policies about how to publish the non-precedent decisions.

Why is this important?

Publicly available appeals decisions allow practitioners to have the most up-to-date information about how USCIS adjudicates applications. And, AAO uses these decisions to help guide officers decide similar cases.
If the AAO is allowed to stop posting these decisions, applicants for benefits will be unable to analyze how the agency decides certain cases. A lack of transparency as to these non-precedent decisions may lead to a “secret” body of law, which FOIA was enacted to prevent.