Logjam of U.S. immigration applications puts millions at greater risk of deportation

In June 2025, people line up outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, which houses offices for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Damian Dovarganes/AP

Damian Dovarganes/AP

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Millions of immigrants are stuck in legal limbo, waiting to change their legal status under the second Trump administration, an NPR analysis shows, leaving more of them vulnerable to deportation.

Since the start of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken longer and longer to process applications, meaning an increasing number of people wait months without confirmation that their application was received — let alone reviewed.

An NPR review of data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that processes and approves immigration applications, shows that nearly 12 million applications for immigration services, such as applying for citizenship, a work permit or other permission to live in the U.S., await a decision.

The ballooning number of pending requests, which saw a jump in the first three months of the second Trump administration, illustrate one lever of the Trump administration's overall strategy to slow down legal migration. Immigrants are struggling to even get the government to acknowledge it received their applications — which leaves people at greater risk of being deported.

"That is a really incredible representation of what this administration is trying to do when it comes to immigration. It's 'throttle everything, focus entirely on deportations and arrests as your measure of success,'" said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "If those are your only measures of success, then who cares about opening applications that could prevent someone from being arrested and prevent someone from having to self-deport?"

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The 11.6 million pending applications in the "backlog" include forms to become a citizen, acquire a green card, work or seek asylum. There are also 247,974 applications in what USCIS calls the "frontlog," which is tracked separately. Those are applications, likely sent by mail, that have been submitted but that the agency has not physically opened and assigned a category.

The slowdown comes as USCIS has taken a tougher approach toward policing immigration laws in the last year. The administration says slower reviews, or stopping some applications entirely, is necessary for national security purposes.

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Matthew Tragesser, spokesman for USCIS, said this administration has implemented "screening and vetting processes" that the previous administration overlooked.

"For years, the Biden administration prioritized rubber-stamping naturalization applications with minimal vetting," Tragesser said in a statement to NPR. He listed the various policy changes — such as tougher naturalization tests, social media screenings and visits to applicants' neighborhoods — which are meant "to ensure applicants demonstrate good moral character and an attachment to the Constitution. USCIS will not take shortcuts in the adjudications process."

The changes to immigration processing have led to stress and confusion for those hoping to legally live or work in the United States. They also come alongside other policy changes that make legal immigration more difficult.

"It's a very tense conversation happening with clients trying to brace for impact," said Luis Cortes Romero, an immigration attorney in Seattle.

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Cortes Romero said one of his clients was denied an interview for his green card in January due to a paperwork delay — after having already waited a year — and it has yet to be rescheduled. A case like this is among those in the "pending" category. But other cases, in the frontlog, have not even been started.

"Our clients are facing immediate anxiety. The conversations we're having with clients are like, 'Did you really send it?'" Cortes Romero said, adding that the agency doesn't confirm it received these applications until they are opened.

Pending applications see an early jump

Pending applications include all cases submitted in a given category, from any period in time, that have not been approved or denied. This number has grown steadily in the last decade, more than doubling over that time, according to an NPR review of data starting from October 2016.

But the backlog jumped by 2 million in the first year of the second Trump administration, more than the increase in all four years of President Trump's first term.

The impact is not uniform. Immigration lawyers said some cases move very quickly and are approved in months. For others, it's months before the agency acknowledges it received an application, leaving some vulnerable to deportation if their status is not approved or denied in time.

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"We are beginning to see the manifestation of data that proves that this administration is slow-walking or even denying the opportunity for these people to adjust," said Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, speaking about people getting a new legal status.

In the second half of last year, the Trump administration also paused many application reviews, including those for all asylum applications — which restarted only in late March. And it paused reviews of all immigration applications for those who come from 39 countries on a travel ban list, alleging higher security risks for people from those countries.

Elizabeth Jacobs, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restricting immigration, said the sharp increase in the backlog at the beginning of Trump's second term could be because the administration cut off other programs that provided legal status but didn't rely on USCIS — such as applications for humanitarian parole. Still, she said that there are concerns with high backlogs — both for the government and for immigrants.

"Processing immigration benefits efficiently is in both the interests of immigrants and this administration with their enforcement priorities because the longer someone has a pending application, not only are they denied those benefits but could be incurring unlawful presence," Jacobs said.

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Proponents of the administration's policies, such as Brandy Perez Carbaugh, former research associate at the Border Security and Immigration Center of the Heritage Foundation, said the backlog highlights a need for more scrutiny in reviewing applications.

"The 11 million pending immigration benefit applications show that our immigration system is not manageable. We need to pause taking in more applications until the backlogs decrease to a manageable level — each year," Perez Carbaugh said, adding that the agency should focus on addressing fraud in immigration applications. "The U.S. immigration system is for Americans, not the rest of the world."

The "frontlog" increases sharply, leaving more in limbo

Even if an application is submitted, USCIS may not confirm receipt until it is open. Lawyers said most applications to USCIS are still filed by mail. This includes visas for human trafficking and domestic violence victims and juveniles, as well as several work permits.

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Cortes Romero, the Seattle immigration attorney, said that the agency pivoted to some electronic filings during the COVID-19 pandemic but is still behind on upgrades like creating electronic filing options that could speed up at least the acknowledgment of receipt.

"It really just exposed how antiquated the infrastructure … is with USCIS," Cortes Romero said. "Although they have made some progress to be able to do that, they're still really far away from being able to file things electronically, which is causing just so much chaos."

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Renata Castro, an immigration attorney with clients around the country, said immigrants may have to wait up to eight months before USCIS even confirms it got their application.

"This is a major challenge because we have clients that are being placed in removal proceedings," Castro said, referring to the start of deportation in immigration court. She said sometimes an immigration judge may not issue a final order of deportation if an immigrant can show a receipt and paperwork to prove they have a pending application with USCIS.

"We have [immigration] judges pressuring us, private immigration attorneys, to produce a document that the government is not able to produce and threatening our clients with deportation because the government cannot issue a receipt," Castro said.

Felicia Escobar Carrillo, former USCIS chief of staff under the Biden administration, said USCIS began publicly tracking the number of applications submitted — but not categorized — in 2023.

"There was a frontlog at the beginning of the Biden administration that we inherited and took a lot of great pain to reduce," Escobar Carrillo said. "It has gone up and down over time, and that is a reflection of applications coming in."

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Quarterly data shows the number of applications in the frontlog was zero in 2023, before jumping to 77,291 by the end of March 2024. Escobar Carrillo said that's because a surge of people wanted to get ahead of new upcoming fees. But during the following three quarters, that number went back to zero.

That changed once Trump came back into office. During the first three months of the administration, the number jumped to 34,028. By the end of September 2025, USCIS reported 247,974 cases in the frontlog.

"This has impacted my practice, my mental health, my clients, my clients' mental health," Castro said. "They're just overwhelmed, tired and frazzled from the uncertainty."