Gosen v. USCIS, Nos. 13-1091 & 13-1461, 2015 WL 4576578 (D.D.C. July 30, 2015) (Bates, J.)

Gosen v. USCIS, Nos. 13-1091 & 13-1461, 2015 WL 4576578 (D.D.C. July 30, 2015) (Bates, J.)

Re: Request for records concerning plaintiffs' application for asylum

Disposition: Granting in part and denying in part defendant's motion for summary judgment; granting in part and denying in part plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment

• Exemption 5, Deliberative Process Privilege:  The court holds that Exemption 5 applies to some portions of the documents withheld.  "This Court and another district court have already noted, and [plaintiffs'] now concede, that the requested documents are deliberative."  "The Court finds that they are [also predecisional]: the government drafted the requested documents before the official process required to grant asylum was complete."  "And no matter what the government did or did not [ultimately] decide . . ., the contents of the remaining pages served the deliberative process for a future decision."  In response to several of plaintiffs' objections, the court finds that "as the government points out, in order '[t]o establish that a document is predecisional, the agency need not point to an agency final decision, but merely establish what deliberative process is involved, and the role ... that the documents at issue played in that process.'"
   
• Procedural Requirements, "Reasonably Segregable" Obligation:  "[T]he Court will require the government to re-assess the remaining pages in dispute . . . and disclose all reasonably segregable portions of non-exempt material."  "The Court has reviewed the documents in question and finds that there is at least some factual material that may not expose the deliberative process."  "It is not entirely clear to the Court why the factual and quoted material in [certain] reports would provide meaningful insight into the decisionmaker's judgment or the deliberative process."