IRAP’s Government Document Collections
Since 2009, IRAP has filed over a hundred Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and has also litigated cases in federal court in order to obtain U.S. government documents about policies that affect refugees and immigrants. Through these efforts, IRAP has received thousands of pages of U.S. government documents, including policies, training, and guidance, that were made public for the first time.
Curated Collections
You can access, search and download any document from IRAP’s U.S government document collection on the DocumentCloud website. If you know what topic you are interested in, we recommend using our curated collections, which let you search all of the documents we received about the Afghan and Iraqi Special Immigrant Visas, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, and Afghan pathways.
All IRAP-Collected Documents
IRAP’s document collection is hosted on the DocumentCloud platform and is part of the non-profit DocumentCloud’s searchable archive that contains millions of government documents uploaded by other non-profits, media organizations, and individuals and promotes transparency.
When we receive important documents, IRAP sometimes analyzes the documents and publishes resources explaining why they are significant. Recent resources are available below:
Recent Resources
Because IRAP’s document collections contain thousands of pages of government documents collected over many years, the documents may contain policies or guidance that are out-of-date. If you are looking for legal information about immigration processes, we instead recommend that you access IRAP’s legal information guides on our legal information website and our legal practitioner resources, that incorporate insights from these government documents and contain information about when they were last updated.
If you would like to learn more about specific FOIA requests that IRAP has filed and the documents that we received, you can use the tabs below which organize our requests by topic and provide access to our FOIA requests; documents that the U.S. government produced to IRAP; and information on our website about the FOIA request and related litigation.
Special Immigrant Visas for Afghans & Iraqis
Summary: This collection consolidates records related to SIVs from all FOIA requests and litigation discovery. We update it regularly.
Summary: This FOIA request to the Department of Defense (DoD) requested records about Project Rabbit, a joint Defense Department and State Department program that was intended to review the employment qualifications of Afghan SIV applicants. DOD produced over a hundred relevant documents.
Summary: This FOIA request to the Department of State (DOS) requested records of about Afghan refugee, SIV, and parole pathways that were created after January 1, 2021. DOS has produced hundreds of relevant records.
Summary: IRAP requested contracts between the U.S. Army and Valiant Government Services LLC related to interpretation services in Iraq. The government responded with over 600 pages of contract documents.
Summary: With this FOIA request to DOS, IRAP requested records related to the procedures for the Chief of Mission process and received approximately 2500 pages of records.
- FOIA Request [to add]
- Records Produced to IRAP and IRAP’s Analysis
U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP)
Summary: This collection consolidates records related to USRAP from all FOIA requests and litigation discovery. We update it regularly.
Summary: This FOIA request to the Department of State (DOS) requested records of about Afghan refugee, SIV, and parole pathways that were created after January 1, 2021. DOS has produced hundreds of relevant records.
Summary: This FOIA request to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requested records of about Afghan refugee, asylum, and parole pathways that were created after January 1, 2021. USCIS has produced hundreds of relevant records.
Summary: This FOIA request to USCIS and DOS requested records of refugee adjudication policies and procedures. USCIS has produced hundreds of relevant records, totaling thousands of pages, including many training and policy documents.
Summary: IRAP requested records from DOS and USCIS relating to the Iraq refugee resettlement, including documents setting up the Priority 2 Direct Access Program for Iraqis, procedures relating to security reviews, and other statistics. The government sent back over 3,500 pages of documents. The documents include policy guidance, statistics, and emails regarding Iraqi refugee processing, security checks procedures, refugee application assessment standards, USCIS interviewing trainings and exercises, and more.
- FOIA Request (DOS, USCIS)
- Records Produced to IRAP
Other FOIA Requests
Summary: This collection consolidates records related to pathways for displaced Afghans from all FOIA requests and litigation discovery. We update it regularly.