Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/326

 502us1$14I 08-21-96 15:27:02 PAGES OPINPGT

168

DEPARTMENT OF STATE v. RAY Opinion of the Court

prosecution for illegal departure.” See Agreement on Migrants—Interdiction, Sept. 23, 1981, United States-Haiti, 33 U. S. T. 3559, 3560, T. I. A. S. No. 10241. In order to monitor compliance with that assurance, State Department personnel conducted confidential interviews with a “representative sample” of unsuccessful emigrants about six months after their involuntary return. All but one or two of the emigrants reported that they had not been harassed or prosecuted since their return to Haiti. Respondents in this case are a Florida lawyer who represents undocumented Haitian nationals seeking political asylum in the United States and three of his clients. In immigration proceedings, respondents are attempting to prove that Haitians who immigrated illegally will face a wellfounded fear of persecution if they return to their homeland and therefore are refugees entitled to asylum in this country. Relying in part on the evidence in the reports of the interviews with former passengers on vessels interdicted by the Coast Guard, the Government has taken the position in those proceedings that respondents’ fear of persecution is not well founded. In order to test the accuracy of the Government’s assertion that undocumented Haitian nationals have not been persecuted upon their return to Haiti, respondents made a series of FOIA requests to three Government agencies for copies of reports of the interviews by State Department personnel with persons who had been involuntarily returned to Haiti. Insofar as relevant to the question before us, the net result of these requests was the production by the State Department of 25 documents, containing approximately 96 pages, which describe a number of interviews with specific returnees and summarize the information that had been obtained during successive periods.2 Thus, for example, a summary 2

Respondents also sought disclosure of an alleged list of 600 Haitians who had been returned to Haiti and had not been mistreated after their arrival. The District Court found, however, that the “record fails to dis-