Somebody already ran a records request for you. You have the envelope. You read what you could and gave up on the rest.
Here is a question worth asking before you plan anything around it. Which record did you actually get?
The Short Answer
A request to Homeland Security gets Homeland Security’s records. It does not get the immigration court’s records.
The immigration court system, EOIR, is not part of the Department of Homeland Security. It says so plainly, and it does not accept DHS forms for requests to its own files.
Form G-639 is a DHS form. It is useful and it is optional, but it reaches one agency. It does not reach the court.
Who Holds What
Four agencies. Four requests, potentially. Which ones you need depends on the question you are trying to answer, not on which form is easiest to find online.
Why This Is the Most Expensive Misunderstanding in This Practice Area
A person is told they are getting “a FOIA.” One request goes out. Documents come back. Everyone treats the history as known.
But the piece that most often changes a case is the piece that request never touched.
An order entered by an immigration judge lives in the court’s record. A file that does not include it can look complete and still be missing the single fact that decides everything. That specific scenario is why finding out whether an order exists takes two requests.
This is not a small technicality. It is the difference between a plan and a guess dressed up as a plan.
How to Tell What You Already Have
You do not need to become an expert. You need to be able to ask one question about the envelope in your closet.
- Look at who sent it. The agency name on the cover letter tells you which record you received.
- Look for anything about a hearing. Court records read differently from agency files. They reference proceedings, dates, and a judge.
- If you do not know, bring it. Ten minutes with someone who reads these every week beats a year of assuming.
Bring the whole envelope, including the pages that look like nothing. The cover sheets are often the most informative part.
What We Do With This
When we look at a person’s history, the first question is not what to file. It is which records exist and which ones have actually been read.
Sometimes the answer is that half the work was already done and the other half is missing. Sometimes everything needed is already sitting in a client’s closet and nobody has read it in order.
If your case is weak, you hear it from us first. If there is risk, you know before anything is filed. If there is a path, you get a plan built around it.
We read the file before we file anything. That is the standard, and this page is the reason it exists.
Find Out Whether Your Record Review Was Actually Complete
If somebody already ran a request for you, that work may still be useful. It may also be half of the picture.
Talk it through with a bilingual team member. Bring whatever you received, in whatever condition it is in.
Law Office of Gilda McDowell. Serving families across West Texas and eastern New Mexico.
This page explains how the records process works. It is not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Everything here was verified against the primary sources on August 28, 2026.