Cross-cutting analysis of executive actions, agency guidance, and federal court rulings reshaping U.S. immigration practice.
USCIS is "arbitrarily throttling" N-400 naturalization cases, an officer told a lawyer at Hacking's firm. April data: completions down 71% from a year ago.
PM-602-0199 interview questions reached field offices within days. One applicant got all three in Denver, and a new lawsuit against the memo is coming.
Overstaying a tourist visa as a teenager and leaving after a year of unlawful presence past 18 triggers a 10-year bar, with no U.S. visa until it runs out.
USCIS now requires the I-693 medical exam inside your initial I-485 filing — and an exam tied to a denied case can't be reused. What changed, and why RFEs persist.
A 221(g) refusal citing the travel-ban pause is hard to beat with an individual lawsuit. INA 212(f) and Trump v. Hawaii give the president wide control.
USCIS has not sought a stay of the Dorcas vacatur — but attorneys with pending 39-country cases say the agency told them it will keep fighting anyway.
Practitioners are now sorting pending I-485s into two stacks — those receipted before USCIS issued PM-602-0199 on May 21, 2026, and those receipted after. The line matters because litigation against the memo is likely to deliver different relief to each group.
Pre-litigation intent-to-sue letters have been the immigration bar's default first move on a stuck case for two decades. The U.S. Attorney's Offices that read them are now buried in habeas petitions and APA challenges — and a different sequence has taken their place.
USCIS's adjustment-of-status discretion memo arrives in a post-Chevron legal landscape, where agencies no longer enjoy automatic deference and where the ITServe Alliance v. Cissna playbook — sue when the agency changes practice without changing the rule — is back in the immigration bar's toolkit.
USCIS's new discretion memo has turned the I-485 interview from a confirmation of statutory eligibility into a discretionary contest. The applicants who clear it will be the ones who arrive with a documented record of taxes, ties, character, and equities — assembled before the notice arrives, not after.
A federal judge in the District of Massachusetts, ruling on summary judgment in a 20-state coalition suit led by California, vacated the Trump proclamation imposing a $100,000 fee on H-1B petitions filed from abroad. The court held the fee is a tax — and only Congress can levy one.
USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 on May 21, told the press the next morning that adjustment would be granted only in 'extraordinary circumstances,' then walked the statement back by afternoon. Immigration attorneys say the sequence — memo, press release, clarification, interview — left adjudicators and applicants reading from four different scripts.
Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. struck down four USCIS policies that had frozen benefits, asylum, and re-review processing for nationals of 39 countries. The relief is nationwide — but the post-CASA fight over whether one district judge can do that is far from settled.
USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 reframes adjustment of status as an 'extraordinary' discretionary benefit, instructing officers to weigh prior status violations, intent at entry, and consular-processing alternatives. Practitioners say it rewrites the statute by memo — and a federal-court challenge is being prepared.