The Department of Justice has released its FOIA annual report for fiscal year 2023, and the numbers are impressive. Below is a summary of the key data.

• Requests received: 110,934, an 18.8 percent increase from 93,370 requests received in FY2022.

• Requests processed: 144.065, a 73.8 percent increase from 82,868 requests processed in FY2022. The Executive Office for Immigration Review alone processed over 104k requests and nearly 34k more than it received (70,475).

• Backlogged requests: 43,927, down 32.4 percent from 64,982 at the end of FY2022.

• Appeals received: 2044, nearly the same as in FY2022 (2048)

• Appeals processed: 2126, the same number as FY2022 (2126)

• Backlogged appeals: 240, a 25 percent decrease from FY2022 (321).

• Total costs: $111,990,580, with $93.32 million in administrative costs and $18.66 million in litigation costs. Total costs in FY2023 were 12.3 percent higher than in FY2022 ($99.72 million).