AAO Non-Precedent Decisions

If you are searching for an AAO decision issued before 2005 or if you are unable to locate an AAO decision in the repository, please contact the USCIS Freedom of Information and Privacy Act (FOIA) Office.

USCIS redacts personally identifiable information and other sensitive material from non-precedent decisions before the decisions are made public. The first page of the scanned decisions contains a notation (for example, "(b)(6)") to indicate the applicable FOIA exception under 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6).

See the Accessibility section for more information on accessing decisions housed in our repository.

You can search by entering free text in the search bar. Some potential parameters you can use include searching by:

• Form number (Example: Form I-129 or Form I-600A)
• Subject matter (Example: Petition for U Nonimmigrant Status or Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur)
• Law or regulation (Example: Sec. 101(a)(15)(L) of the INA or 8 C.F.R. § 204.3)
• Any combination of free text which may appear in an AAO non-precedent decision (Example: Motion to Reopen or H-1B)

You can also search for a specific non-precedent decision if you have the unique case identification number (Example: 93808). Some non-precedent decisions issued between 2015 and 2019 may also be located by the abbreviated name of the party (Example: Matter of D-E-S- Inc.). You can refine your free text search by:

• Specifying time and date limits.
• Sorting your text search by “best match” or “most recent.”

Need more help searching for a decision? Use these search tips.   

The decisions in this collection are published in PDF format. You will need Adobe Reader 8 or higher to view them.  The PDFs from this section of our website may not be fully accessible under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. You may request fully accessible decisions by emailing USCIS.Webmaster@dhs.gov with the subject line “Administrative Decisions.”  In your email, indicate the date, title, citation string (if any), and code letter of the individual decision and the file name of the PDF.