Fabian Grey v. Angelica Alfonso-Royals

140 F.4th 173
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedJune 10, 2025
Docket23-1910
StatusPublished

This text of 140 F.4th 173 (Fabian Grey v. Angelica Alfonso-Royals) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Fabian Grey v. Angelica Alfonso-Royals, 140 F.4th 173 (4th Cir. 2025).

Opinion

USCA4 Appeal: 23-1910 Doc: 54 Filed: 06/10/2025 Pg: 1 of 17

PUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 23-1910

FABIAN GREY,

Plaintiff – Appellant,

v.

ANGELICA ALFONSO-ROYALS, Acting Director, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services,

Defendant – Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, at Beaufort. David C. Norton, District Judge. (9:18-cv-01764-DCN)

Argued: September 27, 2024 Decided: June 10, 2025

Before NIEMEYER, THACKER, and RUSHING, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Rushing wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer and Judge Thacker joined.

ARGUED: Bradley Bruce Banias, BANIAS LAW LLC, Charleston, South Carolina, for Appellant. Victor Manuel Mercado-Santana, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, William C. Peachey, Director, Samuel P. Go, Assistant Director, Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. USCA4 Appeal: 23-1910 Doc: 54 Filed: 06/10/2025 Pg: 2 of 17

RUSHING, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Fabian Grey, a citizen of Jamaica and lawful permanent resident in the

United States, applied for naturalization. After substantial delay in a decision on his

application, Grey filed this lawsuit asking the district court to declare him eligible for

naturalization and order the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)

to naturalize him. Grey also sought documents from USCIS under the Freedom of

Information Act (FOIA) and amended his lawsuit to request court action compelling

USCIS to produce those documents. The district court ultimately granted summary

judgment to USCIS on both claims. USCIS produced substantial documentation

responding to Grey’s FOIA request, and the court determined the agency was entitled to

withhold or redact certain documents under the statute’s law enforcement exemption. As

for naturalization, the court concluded Grey was ineligible for citizenship because he lied

under oath during his deposition in this case. Grey appealed each ruling, and we affirm.

I.

Grey first entered the United States in 2004 on a work visa. Two years later, he

married a United States citizen, and eventually he became a lawful permanent resident. On

February 17, 2016, Grey applied for naturalization. USCIS conducted his naturalization

interview in September 2017 and a home visit in June 2018. During the home visit, Grey

became concerned that USCIS suspected him of marriage fraud.

Having received no decision from the agency on his application, Grey filed this

lawsuit against the director of USCIS on June 27, 2018. Grey asked the district court to

declare him eligible for naturalization and order USCIS to naturalize him pursuant to 8

2 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1910 Doc: 54 Filed: 06/10/2025 Pg: 3 of 17

U.S.C. § 1447(b). Around the same time, Grey also submitted a FOIA request to USCIS,

seeking information about his immigration file and documents related to the agency’s

methods and practices for investigating marriage fraud. When USCIS did not respond to

his inquiry for two months, Grey amended his complaint to add a claim seeking an order

compelling USCIS to respond to his pending FOIA request pursuant to 5 U.S.C.

§ 552(a)(4)(B).

A.

The parties began discovery, and in August 2020 USCIS deposed Grey. During the

deposition, USCIS asked about a criminal charge from 2016 for misprision of a felony.

Grey’s description of the events underlying that charge caused USCIS to dig deeper into

the matter.

During his deposition, Grey recounted that on February 18, 2016, he was sitting in

his car in the parking lot that he routinely used before ferrying by boat to work. Grey

testified that when he exited his car, he saw Darnell Williams, one of his coworkers, lying

on the ground. Because Williams was a frequent prankster, Grey at first thought he was

joking. But when Williams asked for help, Grey realized he had been shot, ran to help him,

and called 911. When the police arrived, Grey told them he found Williams on the ground

and did not know who shot him. At his deposition, Grey insisted that he saw only one

man—the victim. When USCIS asked why Grey was arrested for misprision of a felony,

Grey responded that the shooter, another coworker, falsely told police that Grey was

present for the shooting in an effort to reduce his own charge.

3 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1910 Doc: 54 Filed: 06/10/2025 Pg: 4 of 17

Finding Grey’s story suspicious, USCIS contacted the Beaufort County Solicitor’s

office for more information about the 2016 charge. USCIS obtained a police report and

recordings of two police interviews with Grey: one on February 19, 2016, the day after the

incident, and one on February 29, 2016. Grey’s first interview was largely consistent with

his deposition testimony. But his story changed during the second interview after police

confronted Grey about details of his account that were inconsistent with their continuing

investigation and the confession of Allen Haynes. Grey then told police that when he

arrived at the parking lot on February 18, Haynes was already there sitting in his car. When

Grey exited his car to throw trash away, he and Haynes waved to each other. Then Grey

saw Williams lean over Haynes’s car window. Grey heard a gunshot and saw Williams

fall to the ground. Then Grey heard Haynes make comments before he drove away. When

the police asked Grey why he was not honest from the start, Grey admitted he had been

scared.

B.

While USCIS investigated Grey’s 2016 charges, Grey continued to pursue

information about USCIS’s marriage fraud investigation practices. USCIS produced

documents responsive to Grey’s FOIA request and redacted some of those documents in

whole or in part. The district court ordered USCIS to file a Vaughn index 1 describing the

grounds for its redactions. USCIS did so on July 6, 2020, and attached to the index a

1 A Vaughn index describes an agency’s justification for redacting or withholding particular material from a FOIA production with enough specificity to enable adjudication without in camera review of every redaction. See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820 (D.C. Cir. 1973). 4 USCA4 Appeal: 23-1910 Doc: 54 Filed: 06/10/2025 Pg: 5 of 17

redacted copy of its second document production. But due to an inadvertent clerical error,

redactions on the last 305 pages of that production appeared as a thin black border around

the relevant portions rather than an opaque black box covering the relevant portions. As a

result, the reader could view the material USCIS intended to redact. USCIS then moved

for partial summary judgment on Grey’s FOIA claim without realizing the clerical error.

Both parties moved for partial summary judgment on September 30, 2020. Grey

sought summary judgment on his FOIA claim and cited the inadvertently unredacted

materials. USCIS sought summary judgment on Grey’s naturalization claim based on his

alleged dishonesty about the 2016 criminal charge. In its motion, USCIS relied upon the

2016 police report it obtained from the Beaufort County Solicitor’s Office, which it had

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