USCIS Announces Pause on Benefits Adjudications for Individuals from 19 Countries

On Tuesday Dec. 2, 2025, USCIS released a policy memorandum titled “Hold and Review of all Pending Asylum Applications and all USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from High-Risk Countries.” Under this memorandum and effective immediately, USCIS is suspending a range of pending immigration benefits applications, re-reviewing certain approved applications, and suspending the processing of all applications for asylum and withholding of removal for any applicant. More specifically, USCIS personnel are directed to:

• Pause processing of pending immigration benefit requests for foreign nationals who were born in or are a citizen of one of the 19 countries listed in the Administration’s June 2025 travel ban;
• Conduct a comprehensive re-review of approved immigration benefits for foreign nationals from one of the 19 travel ban countries who entered the United States on or after January 20, 2021; and
• Pause processing of all Forms I-589 applications for asylum and withholding of removal, regardless of the foreign national’s place of birth or nationality.

For the above USCIS action categories, affected foreign nationals and their applications will undergo a re-review of eligibility and admissibility, including a potential interview or re-interview before a benefit can be granted. According to USCIS, the focus of these re-reviews will be identifying potential security or public safety threats, as well as any security-related grounds of ineligibility.

The list of affected applications includes:

• Form I-485, adjustment of status applications;
• Form I-90, applications to replace/renew green cards;
• Form I-131, travel document and advance parole applications;
• Form I-751, petitions to remove conditions on permanent residence; and
• Form N-470, applications to preserve residence for naturalization.

This list is not exhaustive and though the memorandum focuses on applications filed by affected foreign nationals, there have been reports of employer-sponsored petitions filed on behalf of foreign nationals from one of the 19 countries also being affected during review. USCIS does acknowledge that they may lift a processing hold on a specific application due to litigation or other extraordinary circumstances – if the request is approved by the USCIS Director or Deputy Director.

Currently the USCIS action categories are limited to foreign nationals from one of the 19 countries listed in the Administration’s June 2025 travel ban. Those countries are Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Chad, Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, and Yemen.

USCIS says that it will pause any pending immigration application if a travel ban country is listed as the foreign national’s country of birth or country of citizenship on the immigration benefit application. As the June 2025 travel ban only applies to nationals of the listed countries, not those born in the country who are not a national of a listed country, this new policy for pending applications will affect a larger group of foreign nationals.

While the memorandum is to be applied to foreign nationals from travel ban countries who entered on or after January 20, 2021, it also explicitly permits USCIS to extend review to foreign nationals who entered before that date, and there have been reports that the agency will indeed likely broaden the scope of the new policy and apply it to those who entered before Jan. 20, 2021.

Finally, the Administration is reportedly considering whether to broaden its existing travel bans to include additional countries, although the list is not yet specified.  We are continuing to monitor these developments closely.

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