The Biden Administration is refusing to “confirm or deny” whether it has any documents on Prince Harry’s visa relating to his admitted illegal drug use or the terms of his stay, rejecting the public’s right to know if the runaway royal was granted special treatment. 

Ironically, the Department of Homeland security, in denying the request, said it’s protecting the Duke of Sussex’s “privacy.” 

In May, the Heritage Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking any documentation related to Harry’s visa, focusing on whether he lied on government forms about ever using cocaine, marijuana, and psychedelics — which he has elsewhere called “fundamental parts” of his life — or received a waiver from the White House on a question that routinely disqualifies less privileged applicants from entering the country.

Harry’s liberal political lobbying is also forbidden. The Federal Election Commission states that regulations “include a broad prohibition on foreign national activity,” yet Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, push left-wing causes at will, including what a royal commentator, Kristen Meinzer, describes as Harry’s “outright criticism of the U.S. government” in a speech last year at the United Nations.

Despite President Biden’s frequent promises of transparency, the Department of Homeland Security rejected the first FOIA inquiry. Heritage then took the case to court, where a federal judge ordered the government to “either expedite” the request or deny it. DHS responded with a letter from the agency’s senior director, Jimmy Wolfrey, in which he claimed Harry has a “right to privacy” while refusing to “confirm or deny” that anything related to a waiver exists.

“We believe,” the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at Heritage, Nile Gardiner, told me after the request, that “U.S. immigration law should be fully applied here. It is vitally important that anyone who applies to the United States is thoroughly vetted,” but DHS refuses to reveal if Harry even went through the immigration process. 

Mr. Gardiner, who has spent months saying the Biden Administration is “stonewalling,” sees only three ways in which the Duke of Sussex could have obtained residence. Either he “disclosed the full extent of his drug use and received a waiver,” lied under oath, or “DHS blatantly ignored the law.”

Holding public figures to different standards isn’t unique to Prince Harry, and not just because a high-profile person violating the law tells others they can be lawless, too. In 1964’s New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court reversed a libel award, ruling that the plaintiff — a city commissioner — had not established that “actual malice” motivated the Times to print falsehoods, a standard higher than “negligence” for a private citizen.

Since marrying his American-born wife, then Meghan Markle, Harry has become one of the most high-profile foreign citizens in America, making public political statements, starring in a six-part Netflix documentary, and going on a book tour for his wildly bestselling memoir, “Spare,” in which he takes readers behind the scenes of the highly dysfunctional royal family and shares intimate details about losing his virginity and even about how his penis once got frostbite.

These deals reaped millions not because Harry is a private citizen or among the faceless “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” but because he’s a celebrity, famous for being famous. That rarified status has costs, and among them are people who obey immigration laws asking why he appears able to violate them at will.

Typically when senior members of the royal family visit America, they are accorded the treatment of a foreign diplomat, which they effectively are. Yet Harry and Meghan are no longer “working royals,” having famously relinquished their status in the notorious — and ongoing — “Megxit” drama. They are now merely high-wattage celebrities and, according to American immigration law, should not receive special status.  

Imagine you’re an immigrant banned from working or traveling abroad under the terms of your visa or one who refrains from tweeting about politics or attending a rally for fear of being deported. You have a vested interest in learning under what visa Harry works and jet sets when you cannot.

These activities make Harry’s demands for privacy — lampooned earlier this year in an episode of the cartoon “South Park,” in which he and Meghan go on a noisy and hypocritical  “worldwide privacy” — ring hollow. Immigrants struggling to obey visa restrictions and byzantine immigration laws deserve answers, as do the American citizens who welcome them.

The Windsor pedigree may entitle a duke to royal treatment in the U.K., but it’s never been so in America until now, with the Biden Administration acting as palace guards protecting Harry’s privacy over the public’s right to know.