- The State Department withheld eighteen documents and continues reviewing over two thousand pages of Prince Harry’s visa records.
- U.S. officials argue that privacy protections outweigh the public interest in disclosing the Duke of Sussex’s immigration status.
- The Heritage Foundation continues seeking records to determine if the government granted any special treatment to the royal applicant.
The State Department withheld 18 documents in full on August 11, 2026, while it kept reviewing 307 records totaling 2,487 pages in the FOIA fight over Prince Harry’s visa records. The dispute still runs through the Department of Homeland Security, where officials continue to defend the privacy of the file.
Jarrod Panter, the DHS chief FOIA officer, said on March 18, 2025, that release could expose the duke to harassment and unwanted attention. He wrote, “To release [Prince Harry's] exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others.” Panter also said the Heritage Foundation carried “the burden of establishing that the public interest in disclosure outweighs an individual's personal privacy interests.”
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Shari Suzuki, a DHS and CBP FOIA official, added on the same date that “Harry has not consented to having his records made public.” That point has stayed central. The agencies have treated consent as absent.
John Bardo, a Justice Department attorney for DHS, made the confidentiality argument even earlier, during litigation in June 2023. He said “someone’s visa status is confidential” and argued that public interest was not enough to overcome statutory privacy protections. A federal judge then sided with the government in 2025.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ruled for DHS in Heritage Foundation v. DHS, saying Prince Harry’s privacy interests outweighed any public interest in disclosure. Some documents went out in March 2025 after a court order, but they came heavily redacted. The actual immigration forms, including Form I-94 or visa applications, stayed out of sight.
The dispute turns on privacy and public interest
The State Department reported in February 2026: “The Department reports there are 307 records consisting of 2,487 pages of potentially responsive material to be processed. At this point, the Department has begun reviewing and processing the documents.”
That inventory shows how much paper remains in play. Not much is public yet.
The Heritage Foundation says the public has a right to know whether the government gave a royal applicant “special treatment.” Its filing also suggests that any mismatch between the memoir and the visa file could amount to perjury. The government has answered that immigration records are private by design. Even a famous applicant keeps those protections.
USCIS keeps drug-use rules in the background
The case also brushes against USCIS Policy Manual Chapter 8.A, which says applicants found to be “drug abusers or addicts” are generally inadmissible. Officers can still grant waivers. They can also decide that past use disclosed in Spare does not amount to current abuse or addiction.
That policy sits in the background of a fight over records, not a ruling on the merits of any application. The documents remain under review. The next count still matters.
