- USCIS family-sponsored green card approvals plummeted by 54% between July 2025 and January 2026.
- New policies introduced country-specific processing suspensions for up to 40 nations, leaving many applicants in limbo.
- A controversial February 2026 memo triggered ICE arrests of refugees during mandatory one-year re-vetting interviews.
(UNITED STATES) — USCIS reduced family-sponsored green card approvals by 54% from July 2025 to January 2026, according to a Cato Institute analysis that tied the decline to policy shifts after Joseph Edlow’s confirmation and raised questions about whether the slowdown has made it easier for immigration authorities to carry out ICE arrests of people with pending cases.
No USCIS press release, Federal Register notice, or direct agency statement explicitly says the drop in approvals was designed to aid ICE arrests of legal immigrants. The public record instead shows a sharp fall in approvals, new country-based suspensions, and later enforcement steps that critics say left more applicants exposed while they waited.
By January 2026, family-sponsored approvals stood 22% below January 2025 levels. The same analysis said the change followed new “country-specific” factors introduced in November 2025, suspensions covering 19 countries in December 2025, and a wider freeze covering 40 countries in January 2026.
Those changes came after USCIS paused applications from “dozens of high-risk countries” following a post-Thanksgiving 2025 shooting in Washington involving an Afghan national. Country-specific holds remained in place even after a March 30, 2026 partial asylum lift for non-high-risk countries.
The timing matters for applicants whose temporary status can lapse while adjustment cases sit unresolved. Analyses say those delays can leave pending applicants, including relatives of U.S. citizens and refugees with otherwise unquestioned status, more vulnerable to enforcement.
One example involved Cuban parolees seeking permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act. Jose Miguel Suri Hernández has been detained since 2024 while a pending application remained suspended for seven months.
That case unfolded amid a reported 463% rise in Cuban arrests. That increase was linked to a broader enforcement climate in which pending applicants from affected groups faced longer waits for green card approvals.
A second shift arrived in February 2026, when acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow issued a joint memo that reinterpreted the law to allow ICE detention of refugees one year after admission if they had not yet received green cards. The memo reversed prior policy and treated the one-year mark as a “mandatory re-vetting point”.
Under that policy, refugees had to appear for re-vetting interviews or face arrest. About 150 people were arrested before a district court blocked the practice.
The memo added another layer to the debate over the approval slowdown because refugees are normally expected to seek permanent residence after one year in the United States. By tying that point to renewed screening and possible detention, the new approach turned an administrative milestone into an enforcement trigger.
Edlow’s tenure sits at the center of both developments in the record described here: the approval decline and the later re-vetting rule. The Cato Institute analysis attributed the fall in family-sponsored approvals to policy changes after his confirmation, while the Lyons-Edlow memo set out a direct path for detention in refugee cases.
Still, the available documents do not contain an explicit USCIS statement saying the agency cut approvals in order to help ICE. The claim rests on the overlap between slower case processing and a system in which people remain removable or detainable while applications stay pending.
That distinction has become central as immigration lawyers and policy analysts try to separate documented agency action from inferred purpose. Analyses suggest the delays enabled enforcement, but no official USCIS announcement confirmed that helping ICE arrests was the agency’s stated objective.
The country-based suspensions appear to have had the clearest effect on applicants from targeted places. People who might otherwise have adjusted status remained in limbo as USCIS withheld adjudications, first for 19 countries and then for 40, after the agency added the new country-specific review factors in November 2025.
That sequence created a measurable break in approvals over a short period. A fall of 54% in six months is steep by itself; the additional comparison, 22% below January 2025, suggested the slowdown was not simply a routine month-to-month fluctuation.
USCIS has not publicly tied those numbers to a change in enforcement strategy, but the consequences described are concrete. Delayed adjudications can leave parolees, family-sponsored applicants, and refugees without the permanent status that would otherwise narrow ICE’s room to act.
The Cuban cases illustrate that gap in stark terms. A pending application did not shield Suri Hernández from detention, and a months-long suspension meant the case remained unresolved while enforcement continued.
Refugees faced a different version of the same problem under the February 2026 memo. After one year in the country, the point when many expect a green card process to move forward instead became the moment when ICE could demand another interview and make an arrest for non-compliance.
The district court block halted that practice after roughly 150 arrests, but the underlying record still shows how administrative delay and enforcement can intersect. One policy slowed or suspended decisions. Another treated the absence of a green card at the one-year mark as grounds for action.
AILA coverage dated April 21, 2026 discussed other enforcement issues but did not identify a direct USCIS policy that tied approval cuts to ICE arrests. That leaves the public evidence in a narrower frame: a documented drop in green card approvals, documented suspensions by country, a documented re-vetting memo, and documented arrests under the later refugee policy.
In that frame, the numbers are hard to miss. Family-sponsored green card approvals dropped 54% from July 2025 to January 2026. January approvals ran 22% below the same month a year earlier. USCIS suspended processing for 19 countries in December 2025 and expanded that to 40 countries in January 2026. Cuban arrests rose 463%. About 150 refugees were arrested before a court stepped in.
Those figures do not by themselves prove motive. They do show how a drop in green card approvals, combined with targeted suspensions and new detention rules, reshaped the risk facing immigrants whose cases remained unfinished as USCIS slowed decisions and enforcement moved ahead.
