CA7 on FOIA, H-1B Stats: Rubman v. USCIS

"H-1B visas allow U.S. companies to hire noncitizen workers with specialized skills. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“CIS”), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), is responsible for their issuance. David Rubman sent CIS a request under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) seeking “copies of all documents reflecting statistics … about H-1B visa applications” from the last four years. CIS responded with a single document: a data table that the agency had created to respond to his request. Rubman doubted the table’s accuracy and insisted that CIS provide the documents he originally asked for: “‘ALL documents reflecting statistics’” about H-1B visa applications, including internal statistical reports and e-mails. CIS refused, insisting that additional records would not be helpful and would “only create additional confusion.” Rubman sued, challenging the adequacy of the search that CIS performed in response to his FOIA request. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the agency.

We reverse. An adequate search is one that was both performed in good faith and reasonably designed to uncover the requested records. CIS failed to conduct an adequate search as required by law when it unilaterally narrowed Rubman’s request for “all documents” to a single, newly generated statistical table." - Rubman v. USCIS, Aug. 31, 2015.

[Hats off to David Rubman!]