A caller to the Immigration Answer Show gave one of the first field reports of PM-602-0199 working at an actual interview window. Her marriage-based green card interview was May 26 at the Denver field office: the Tuesday after the adjustment-of-status memo dropped on Thursday, May 21, with Memorial Day in between.
mic What the Attorney Says
“And Denver was ready. So, in other words, the Denver field office was ready to ask people about this memo on Tuesday, even though it just came out on Thursday.”
The officer asked her three questions beyond the usual marriage bona fides: what prevented her from applying from her home country; whether anything is preventing her from applying from her home country now; and why she overstayed her visa. The applicant entered on a tourist visa from Mexico at 13; she is 23 now and has been married to a U.S. citizen since June 2024. She answered that leaving would trigger an unlawful presence bar and separate her from her husband, and that a 13-year-old does not choose to overstay. Her lawyer stepped in on the second question, and the officer moved on.
What the officer said next is the revealing part. She could approve the I-130 once a tax-document RFE was answered. But on the I-485, in the caller’s telling, the officer said she didn’t have any answer and didn’t know what was happening.
mic What the Attorney Says
“They weren’t getting guidance on how they’re going to handle this memo and what do they do with answers like yours? They don’t have any clue because [USCIS] hasn’t made that clear.”
Officers were trained on the questions within days but given nothing on what to do with the answers. That gap matches the pattern practitioners have described since the memo reframed adjustment as extraordinary discretionary relief, and it is why building a discretion record before the interview now matters as much as the marriage evidence itself. Founding attorney Jim Hacking’s read is that the holding pattern is the point.
mic What the Attorney Says
“We’re going to file a lawsuit against them for this plan because I think they’re going to sit on everybody’s green card while this is in effect. So, I think it’s completely illegal what they’re doing.”
The vehicle will be a group federal suit, at $1,500 per plaintiff, asking a judge to declare the memo unlawful.
mic What the Attorney Says
“We’re going to try to get as many people as we can into this lawsuit. … we will ask a federal judge to declare this rule illegal. And sometimes the judges will declare the rule illegal as just for the people that are in the lawsuit … and sometimes they’ll declare it void for everybody across the country.”
The template is the firm’s December suit over the 39-country adjudication holds, where a Rhode Island judge ruled the pause unlawful and, per Hacking, USCIS resumed approving the plaintiffs’ cases, though so far only for the plaintiffs, since the broader vacatur is on appeal.
mic What the Attorney Says
“So like right now we’re suing for the people from the 39 countries. We filed a suit in December. So a judge said that what USCIS was doing was illegal. And so now USCIS is approving those cases and they’re moving again.”
For applicants mid-process, the advice from the call was unglamorous: answer the RFE completely and on time, treat the memo questions as scripted rather than personal, and expect the I-485 to sit while the challenge plays out. How long that sit lasts, and who escapes it, will be decided the same way the 39-country pause was: by a federal judge, not at the interview window.
Sources
- USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 — Adjustment of Status and Discretion (May 21, 2026) open_in_new
- USCIS — Adjustment of Status (Processes and Procedures) open_in_new
- 8 U.S.C. § 1255 — Adjustment of Status (Cornell LII) open_in_new
- Immigration Answer Show — live broadcast (July 1, 2026) open_in_new