The government's version of your history decides your case. How to read it first, for free, and why three agencies need three separate requests.
Reviewed by Ekaterina Fitenko, Esq. — Florida Bar #1064536. With 20+ years of experience in the legal field, she advises clients on obtaining their immigration records before filing, in English and Russian.
The government's version of your immigration history is the one that decides your case, and it is not always the version you remember. A Freedom of Information Act request lets you read it first, for free, before you sign a form under penalty of perjury.
The gap between memory and record is where cases are lost. A visa refusal from 2009 that the applicant recalls as a cancelled appointment; an entry recorded with a different date of birth; a prior application filed by a relative that the applicant never saw; an old order of removal that was never served in a way the person understood. Each of those is answerable if you know about it, and each is a serious problem if it surfaces at an interview.
Requesting your own file is routine and carries no adverse inference. It is not an admission, it does not open a review of your case, and it is what careful practitioners do before naturalization, before adjustment, and before any filing where the history questions are not perfectly clear.
The Alien File — the A-file — is the master record kept under your A-number, and it follows you across agencies and decades. It holds applications and petitions you or others filed, the forms and evidence submitted with them, decisions and notices, and the officer's notes and worksheets from interviews.
The last of those is the part people do not expect. Interview worksheets record what an officer thought at the time, including impressions that never became a written decision, and they are often the most useful pages in the packet for anyone preparing to answer the same questions again.
Entry and exit records, prior addresses, biometrics history and correspondence sent to you also appear. Where a notice is in the file and you never received it, the file itself becomes evidence of that fact — which matters, because a notice mailed to an address of record is generally treated as delivered.
One request does not reach everything. USCIS holds the A-file and its own records. Customs and Border Protection holds travel history, inspection records and secondary-inspection notes. The Executive Office for Immigration Review holds immigration court records, including hearing transcripts and any order a judge entered.
Ask each agency separately, and ask the right one for the thing you actually need. A person trying to reconstruct dates of travel wants CBP; a person trying to learn what happened at a hearing they missed wants EOIR; a person preparing to naturalize wants USCIS. Sending all three the same request wastes months.
Travel history is the common special case, because CBP publishes an online tool that returns recent arrival and departure records without a FOIA request at all. Try that before filing anything, and use FOIA for the periods it does not cover.
USCIS accepts requests through its FOIA system online, and that route is faster than mail and gives you a tracking number and electronic delivery. Form G-639 is the standard vehicle and is published at uscis.gov/g-639. Strictly, a FOIA request need not be on a particular form, but the form asks for what the agency needs, and a request that omits those details is slower, not cleverer.
Identity verification is the step that most often sends a request back. Asking for your own records means proving you are you — the form provides for a statement made under penalty of perjury under 28 U.S.C. § 1746, and a notarised statement also works. Where an attorney requests on your behalf, Form G-28 accompanies the request.
Give the identifiers the agency searches on: full legal name and every name you have used, date and place of birth, A-number if you have one, and receipt numbers of prior filings. A request without an A-number can still be processed, but names alone produce weaker searches, and a missing former name is the usual reason a file comes back thinner than it should.
USCIS sorts FOIA requests into three tracks. Track 1 is for simple requests with a small volume of records. Track 2 is for complex requests, which is where most full A-file requests land. Track 3 is accelerated, and it exists for people in proceedings before an immigration judge.
Track 3 is the provision worth knowing about, because it changes the timescale entirely for the people who need records most urgently. To use it you show that you are in removal proceedings — a copy of the charging document or a hearing notice establishes it — and the request is moved ahead of the ordinary queue.
If you are in proceedings and file a Track 2 request without saying so, you wait in the long line for no reason. Say it, attach the proof, and say it in the request rather than in a later follow-up. If you are not in proceedings, Track 3 is not available, and asking for it does not help.
The statute gives agencies twenty business days to respond, under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i). In practice, complex immigration requests routinely take far longer, and the twenty-day figure describes a legal duty rather than an expectation you should plan around.
Plan on months for a full A-file on Track 2, and start the request as early in your case as you can. The single most common sequencing error in this area is requesting the file after a filing deadline is already close, when the answer arrives too late to shape what gets filed.
There is normally no fee. FOIA provides for free search and duplication within defined limits, and requests by individuals for their own immigration records generally fall within them. If a fee is ever proposed, the agency tells you before incurring it.
Expect a large PDF with no narrative order. Files arrive as scanned pages grouped by the agency's own logic, not chronologically, and the first task is to build a timeline: every date, every form, every decision, in order.
Read the officer's notes and the sworn statements first. These are the pages that contradict memory most often, and they are the pages an officer will read before your next interview. Where something in them is wrong, you want to know the exact page and the exact wording well before you are asked about it.
Check the identity data on every document, because errors propagate. A misspelled name or a wrong date of birth entered once in 2011 can appear in every record since, and correcting it is a separate exercise from the case itself — our guidance on correcting an error on a USCIS document covers which form applies to which document.
Some material comes back blacked out, and the agency cites the exemption it relied on. Common grounds include law-enforcement techniques and information about other people, and a request for your own file does not entitle you to a relative's private information appearing in it.
The response letter is worth reading closely rather than filing away. It states how many pages were located, how many were released in full, how many in part, and how many were withheld — and a released page count far smaller than the file you expected is itself information, usually about the search terms rather than the file.
You can appeal an adverse determination administratively within the period the response letter states, and the letter names the office and the deadline. Where a missing former name or a missing A-number caused a thin result, a new request with better identifiers is usually faster than an appeal. Where records you need for a hearing are genuinely withheld, that is a matter to raise with counsel — the firm's case strategy practice works from the file rather than from recollection, and our deportation defense guide explains how the record is used in proceedings.
Normally nothing. FOIA provides free search and duplication within defined limits, and individual requests for one's own immigration records generally fall inside them. An agency must notify you before incurring any fee.
The statutory response period is twenty business days under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(6)(A)(i), but a full A-file on the complex track routinely takes considerably longer. Request it months before you need it rather than weeks.
Yes, through the accelerated track available to people in proceedings before an immigration judge. Say so in the request and attach proof such as a charging document or hearing notice; without that proof the request sits in the ordinary queue.
Yes. Provide full legal name and every former name, date and place of birth, and any receipt numbers from prior filings. Searches are weaker without an A-number, and a forgotten former name is the usual reason a file comes back incomplete.
Often not. Customs and Border Protection publishes an online tool returning recent arrival and departure records without a FOIA request. Use FOIA for periods that tool does not cover, and direct it to CBP rather than USCIS.
No. A FOIA request is a records request, not an application, and it does not trigger review of your immigration case. It is standard preparation before naturalization or adjustment where the history is not entirely clear.
$200 for 30 minutes, in English or Russian. Call (305) 315-3425 or email fitenkolaw@gmail.com to schedule.
This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Form editions, fees and processing times change; confirm current requirements with USCIS before filing. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Fitenko Law PLLC, 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 277, Coral Springs, FL 33076 (main office); 600 Three Islands Boulevard, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009 (by appointment only). Phone: (305) 315-3425. Email: fitenkolaw@gmail.com