19-1157 Spadaro v. United States Customs and Border Protection, et al. UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT _______________ August Term, 2019 (Argued: May 4, 2020 Decided: October 20, 2020) No. 19-1157 _______________ SARO SPADARO, Plaintiff-Appellant, — v. — UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, UNITED STATES CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION SERVICES, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Defendants-Appellees. _______________ Before: LOHIER, BIANCO, and PARK, Circuit Judges. _______________ Plaintiff-appellant Saro Spadaro appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Sullivan, J.) entered in favor of defendants-appellees United States Customs and Border Protection, the United States Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the United States Department of Justice. Spadaro filed his complaint under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, seeking documents related to the revocation of his visa. The district court granted defendants-appellees’ motion for summary judgment, upholding their claims of statutory exemptions, and entered judgment on March 27, 2019. Because we conclude that the contested documents pertain to the issuance and refusal of a visa, we hold that they were properly withheld under FOIA Exemption 3, and specifically INA § 222(f). We also find Spadaro’s other arguments as to why Exemption 3 does not protect the withheld documents from disclosure to be unpersuasive. Accordingly, and for the reasons set forth in a separate summary order addressing FOIA Exemption 5 filed simultaneously with this Opinion, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court. _______________ ROBERT S. GROBAN, JR., Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP, New York, NY (David J. Clark, Matthew S. Aibel, Epstein Becker & Green, P.C., New York, NY, on the brief), for Plaintiff- Appellant. STEPHEN CHA-KIM, Assistant United States Attorney (Benjamin H. Torrance, Assistant United States Attorney, on the brief), for Audrey Strauss, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, New York, NY, for Defendants-Appellees. _______________ JOSEPH F. BIANCO, Circuit Judge: Plaintiff-appellant Saro Spadaro brought this action under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, against defendants-appellees United 2 States Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), the United States Department of State (“DOS”), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”), and the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ” and, collectively, “the government”), in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Sullivan, J.). Spadaro sought complete and unredacted records relating to himself generally and relating to the government’s decision to prudentially revoke his visa in 2008. In response, the government invoked certain statutory exemptions, including FOIA Exemption 3, which protects from disclosure records that are specifically exempted by statute, and FOIA Exemption 5, which protects from disclosure attorney-client and deliberative communications. The district court granted summary judgment in the government’s favor, holding that it properly withheld the documents under the exemptions. On appeal, Spadaro principally argues that Exemption 3 does not apply to ...
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