{"id":326,"date":"2026-01-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=326"},"modified":"2026-01-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T12:00:00","slug":"sduis-westerlund-administrative-record-completeness-apa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"San Diego University for Integrative Studies v. Westerlund \u2014 S.D. Cal. Denies Motion to Expand the Administrative Record in Foreign-Student Certification Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Case<\/dt>\n
San Diego University for Integrative Studies v. Westerlund<\/dd>\n
Court<\/dt>\n
U.S. District Court \u2014 Southern District of California<\/dd>\n
Date Decided<\/dt>\n
2026-01-22<\/dd>\n
Docket No.<\/dt>\n
3:24-cv-01701<\/dd>\n
Status<\/dt>\n
Unreported \/ Non-Citable<\/dd>\n
Topics<\/dt>\n
Administrative Procedure Act, administrative record completeness, agency decision review, immigration certification (SEVP\/SEVIS)<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

San Diego University for Integrative Studies (“SDUIS”) is a small, private postsecondary school whose student body is mostly international. To enroll foreign students on F or M visas, a school must be certified by the federal government’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program (“SEVP”), which is administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) within the Department of Homeland Security. Certified schools issue immigration documents through a database called SEVIS that allows international students to obtain visas and lawfully study in the United States.<\/p>\n

In January 2024, ICE withdrew SDUIS’s SEVP certification, finding that the school had failed to timely report a physical relocation of its main instructional site and had failed to report the loss of state licensing required for some of its degree programs. The withdrawal was, in practical terms, an existential threat \u2014 without certification, the school cannot continue to enroll new foreign students. SDUIS sued under the federal Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), which is the primary vehicle for challenging final federal agency decisions in court. A different judge in the same district had earlier granted a preliminary injunction in 2024 keeping the certification in place during litigation.<\/p>\n

Once a case under the APA is teed up for merits decision, the federal court reviews the “administrative record” \u2014 the documents the agency considered when making its decision. ICE certified an administrative record in this case in September 2025. SDUIS moved to compel ICE to add additional documents (records of internal deliberations, help-desk tickets from calls to the SEVP Response Center, and a series of emails) and also asked to take the deposition of the deciding official, Katherine Westerlund. The magistrate judge addressed all of those requests in this order.<\/p>\n

The Court’s Holding<\/h2>\n

The court denied SDUIS’s motion in full. Under controlling Ninth Circuit and Supreme Court precedent, an agency’s certification of the administrative record carries a “presumption of regularity.” To overcome that presumption, the challenger must point to “reasonable, non-speculative grounds” to believe specific documents were considered by the agency and not included, and must identify those documents with enough specificity \u2014 not just argue that they probably exist somewhere.<\/p>\n

The court walked through SDUIS’s three categories of allegedly missing documents and found each one wanting. The screenshot of an unrelated entity’s website that SDUIS argued ICE must have looked at was not enough; speculation about what the agency “might have” considered is not concrete evidence. The help-desk ticket category was based only on the assumption that calls to a help line generate logs \u2014 but SDUIS offered no evidence that ICE’s actual decisionmakers ever consulted those logs. Of the five disputed emails, two were generic COVID-19 communications, one was a scheduling email sent two months after the alleged trigger event, one was a returning-from-leave check-in, and the last was sent in February 2025 \u2014 after the agency’s decision and therefore necessarily not part of the record under Vermont Yankee<\/em>‘s rule that judicial review is bounded by the time of the decision.<\/p>\n

Because none of the document categories raised more than speculation, the court found no bad faith and no basis to depose Westerlund. Bad-faith inquiries into agency decisionmakers are reserved for cases with a “strong showing” of improper behavior, and depositions of agency officials in APA cases are likewise rare and require non-speculative grounds. SDUIS had neither.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n