Prince Harry’s immigration records ‘heavily redacted’ in court filings despite public interest claims. Here’s why….

Officials of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have responded to US District Court Judge Carl Nichols order on the US entry and immigration details of British royal Prince Harry, the AP reported.

While the DHS did release some documents, court filings on March 18 showed that information on the Duke of Sussex's immigration details were “heavily redacted”, it added.

US Court Orders Prince Harry's Immigration Details: What Happened?

The court filings thus no had fresh information on the British royal's move to the US. The court order had come in response to conservative group, The Heritage Foundation pushing for details on whether Prince Harry had lied about is past drug use on the immigration forms, as per the report.

The foundation filed a lawsuit after the DHS rejected its request for the release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Prince Harry himself was not a party in the lawsuit, it added.

Heritage argued there is “intense public interest” around potential “special treatment” in Prince Harry's application process, especially in light of past drug use written in memoir Spare (2023).

DHS officials told Judge Nichols that the records were being “withheld in full” and that all records are deemed “categorically exempt from disclosure”, citing security and privacy concerns for the UK Prince, the report said.

Why Were Prince Harry's Records ‘Heavily Redacted’ in Court?

Speaking to the court, Shari Suzuki, an official handling Freedom of Information Act requests for DHS and Customs and Border Protection, said that Prince Harry “has not consented to having his records made public”, AP reported.

“To release (Prince Harry's) exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others," added Jarrod Panter, another official and DHS chief FOIA.

Panter wrote that the Heritage Foundation bears “the burden of establishing that the public interest in disclosure outweighs an individual’s personal privacy interests in their information and that a significant public benefit would result from the disclosure of the individual’s records.”

As per the report, Panter's statement to the court includes multiple pages that are entirely blacked out.

Prince Harry's Move to US: What We Know

Prince Harry, who is the second son of Britain's King Charles III and younger brother of Prince William (also Duke of Cambridge), immigrated to the US after his marriage to American actress and now Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle. The couple moved to southern California with their children in 2020.

In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry said he took drugs, including cocaine several times from age 17, and also used cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms. Notably, US visa applications require disclosure on drug use, a formality that has previously caused hiccups for other international figures travelling into the country. Lying on the form has serious consequences, the AP report noted.

In his hearing last month, Judge Nichols said he was seeking to strike a balance between revealing too much information in the DHS statements and redacting them to the point of meaninglessness. “There’s a point where redactions would leave just a name or a date,” he said.

(With inputs from AP)