Joe Biden's administration has formally rejected a request for the publication of Prince Harry's visa application in a case about the royal's past drug use.
Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation is suing the Department of Homeland Security under the Freedom of Information Act in an effort to determine whether the Duke of Sussex disclosed his experiences with drugs when seeking entry to America.
Harry described taking cocaine, marijuana, magic mushrooms and ayahuasca in his book Spare, released in January 2023, and the organization wants to know whether he was given favorable treatment by the DHS.
The rejection came under aspects of the act reserved for "a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy," according to a Department of Homeland Security letter seen by Newsweek.
Jimmy Wolfrey, a senior director at the DHS, wrote: "To the extent records exist, this office does not find a public interest in disclosure sufficient to override the subject's privacy interests.
"As such, to the extent that responsive records would be maintained by DHS Headquarters' offices on the subject individual, this office would deny your request."
The DHS said it could only answer part of the foundation's application, and referred other parts to the U.S Citizenship & Immigration Services and Office of Biometric Identity Management.
Meanwhile, Nile Gardiner, director of the foundation's Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, said the rejection "shows an appalling lack of transparency by the Biden Administration."
"The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to stonewall the Heritage Foundation's Freedom of Information request are unacceptable, and we will be contesting their position," he told the New York Post.
"We expected to have to fight every step of this case in federal court and will continue to press for transparency and accountability for the American people."
To Newsweek, he said: "Heritage believes everyone should be treated in the same way when applying to stay in the United States: No one should be above the law and there should never be any preferential treatment for celebrity elites.
"We are urging openness, transparency, and accountability from the Biden administration, and this is why we are calling for the release of Prince Harry's immigration records."
Prince Harry's wrote in Spare: "Psychedelics did me some good as well. I'd experimented with them over the years, for fun, but now I'd begun to use them therapeutically, medicinally."
"They didn't simply allow me to escape reality for a while, they let me redefine
reality.
"Under the influence of these substances I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavily filtered senses, a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful—a world with no red mist, no reason for red mist. There was only truth."
Erik Finch, director of immigration strategy at visa company Boundless Immigration and a former U.S. immigration agent, told Newsweek Harry may have a long time to wait before the saga finally draws to a close.
"The American bureaucracy, and especially as it relates to FOIA and especially as it relates to people that the government doesn't want to reveal information about, they can drag on for a really, really long time," he said. "I would say six months would be an incredibly amazing surprise.
"Even people who make their requests for their own information to the State Department as it relates to Visa records and stuff can wait 6 to 18 months."
Jack Royston is Newsweek's chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
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