USCIS Adjudication Holds of 2025–2026 and the Delay Claim

Two USCIS memoranda froze final decisions for every pending asylum case and for nationals of 39 countries. Courts have since vacated and enjoined them, and the delay claim has changed shape.

Between December 2025 and the summer of 2026, a large group of pending immigration cases stopped moving for a reason that had nothing to do with the individual file: USCIS placed them on an agency-wide hold. This article explains what the hold memoranda did, how federal courts treated them, and why a categorical hold changes the analysis of an ordinary delay claim.

What the two memoranda did

On December 2, 2025, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192. It placed a hold on every pending asylum application, regardless of the applicant's nationality, and on pending benefit requests filed by nationals of the 19 countries named in Presidential Proclamation 10949 of June 2025. It also ordered a re-review of benefits already approved for nationals of those countries who entered on or after January 20, 2021. On January 1, 2026, PM-602-0194 extended the same hold and re-review to the additional countries named in Proclamation 10998 of December 16, 2025.

The hold reached the forms that matter most to people already in the United States: adjustment of status (Form I-485), green card replacement (Form I-90), travel documents (Form I-131) and removal of conditions on residence (Form I-751), among others. Files could move through intermediate steps, but no final decision was to issue until the USCIS Director lifted or modified the hold. A related policy alert, PA-2025-26, addressed country-specific factors in discretionary decisions.

How the courts responded

Several courts first granted relief limited to the plaintiffs before them. Two later rulings went further:

• Vacatur. On June 5, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, No. 26-cv-00132, vacated PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194 and PA-2025-26. USCIS published a notice stating that the vacatur applies agency-wide and that the three documents should be treated as not in effect.
• Class-wide injunction. On August 24, 2026, the Northern District of California, in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Edlow, No. 26-cv-04850-CRB, enjoined both memoranda, ordered USCIS to adjudicate in the normal course, and certified a class of nationals of the 39 listed countries, or of the Palestinian Authority, whose applications were subject to the holds. USCIS stated that it strongly disagrees with the order but will follow it pending possible further review.

Both rulings were reached under the Administrative Procedure Act's set-aside provision, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2), not under the unreasonable-delay provision. That distinction is the subject of a separate comparison and explains much of what follows.

Why a hold changes the delay analysis

An ordinary delay claim asks whether the time an application has been pending is unreasonable, measured by the TRAC factors. The first factor asks whether the agency follows a "rule of reason", which usually means a first-in, first-out queue. A categorical hold is not a queue. It is a decision not to decide a class of cases until further notice, and it removes the file from whatever order would otherwise apply.

That has two consequences. While a hold is in force, an individual complaint that pleads only delay asks the court to measure a wait that the agency attributes to a policy rather than to its workload, and the policy itself is better attacked directly. Once the hold is vacated or enjoined, the agency can no longer rely on it to explain why a file has not been decided, and the case returns to an ordinary TRAC analysis. Neither ruling decides, for any individual applicant, how long is too long. That question stays individual.

What the rulings do not reach

The entry restrictions in Proclamations 10949 and 10998 rest on 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) and govern visa issuance abroad, which is a different question from adjudication by USCIS inside the United States. The re-review of approved benefits raises its own issues. And the government may still seek further review of both decisions, so the status of any given file should be checked against current USCIS notices rather than assumed.

For specific application types, see asylum delays and naturalization applications awaiting an interview. For a reader deciding what to do next, the practical questions are collected separately, together with the question of whether to rely on a class action.

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