A Court Has Ordered USCIS to Restart the Applications It Put on Hold

Published August 29, 2026 | By Parikh & Prasad, PC

If you are a national of one of the countries named in the travel-ban proclamations and your case has been sitting at USCIS with no movement, there is now a court order you can point to. On August 24, 2026, a federal judge in California blocked the two policy memoranda that froze those cases, certified a nationwide class, and ordered USCIS to adjudicate normally.

What the court ordered

The August 24, 2026 order came in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Edlow, No. 3:26-cv-04850, before Judge Charles R. Breyer in the Northern District of California. It did two things at once: granted class certification and granted a preliminary injunction.

The injunction runs against USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 and Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194. In its August 28 alert, USCIS put the obligation in its own words: the agency "is ordered to adjudicate applications in the normal course of USCIS' process."

That phrase is the whole order. Nobody is granted a benefit here. Nobody is told how a case must come out. USCIS is told it may no longer park a case indefinitely because of where the applicant is from — the file goes back into the queue, and it gets decided on its merits.

What the holds covered

USCIS named the memoranda itself in a March 30, 2026 alert describing its screening program. PM-602-0192 is Hold and Review of all Pending Asylum Applications and all USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from High-Risk Countries. PM-602-0193 covers Diversity Visa adjustment applications. PM-602-0194 is Hold and Review of USCIS Benefit Application Filed by Aliens from Additional High-Risk Countries.

Read the PM-602-0192 title again. It does not stop at asylum. It reaches all USCIS benefit applications filed by nationals of the listed countries.

So the freeze took in adjustment of status under INA § 245 (8 U.S.C. § 1255). Naturalization under INA § 316 (8 U.S.C. § 1427). Family and employment-based petitions, employment authorization applications, travel documents. Filed, in most cases, by people already living here lawfully and for years.

Where the holds came from

USCIS has traced the memoranda to two proclamations issued under INA § 212(f) (8 U.S.C. § 1182(f)).

Proclamation 10949, dated June 4, 2025, fully restricted entry by nationals of twelve countries: Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. It partially restricted seven more — Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. Proclamation 10998, dated December 16, 2025, continued restrictions on several of those and added others. USCIS puts the combined total at 39 countries.

Here is the distinction that matters. Those proclamations are entry restrictions. They govern admission at a port of entry and, ordinarily, visa issuance abroad. They do not on their own direct USCIS to freeze the domestic applications of people already inside the United States.

Turning an entry restriction into an adjudication hold was USCIS's own policy choice, made through these memoranda. That choice is what the court enjoined.

Who is in the class

The certified class has four elements, which USCIS reproduced in its alert. Individuals who are citizens or nationals of one or more of the 39 countries listed in Proclamations 10949 or 10998, or of the Palestinian Authority; who are seeking asylum with a pending Form I-589, or who otherwise have a benefit application pending with USCIS; where that application is subject to the hold imposed by PM-602-0192 or PM-602-0194; and where it had not received a final adjudication as of the date of class certification.

The "or" in the middle does a lot of work. You do not need an asylum claim to be in this class.

Any pending USCIS benefit application frozen under either memorandum and undecided as of August 24, 2026 qualifies. The adjustment applicant still waiting on an interview. The H-1B or L-1 worker whose extension went quiet. The permanent resident whose N-400 stalled after the interview. The spouse whose employment authorization renewal never came back.

This is the second court order on these policies

It is not the first, and the sequence explains why applicants have seen inconsistent results.

On June 5, 2026, the District of Rhode Island issued an order in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, No. 26-cv-00132-JJM-PAS, vacating PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and Policy Alert PA-2025-26. Final judgment followed on June 11. USCIS announced then that the vacatur applied agency-wide and the memoranda "should be treated as if they are not in effect."

Two months later the same memoranda were before a second court and needed a fresh injunction. Draw the obvious conclusion: this litigation is not over.

USCIS has said in both alerts that it strongly disagrees with the courts' orders and will comply "pending possible further judicial review." The relief in hand is a preliminary injunction, entered before final judgment. Preliminary relief can be modified, stayed on appeal, or dissolved.

What this order does not touch

Three things survive it.

The proclamations stand. Proclamations 10949 and 10998 still restrict entry. Red Eagle does not reach them. If you are a national of a covered country and you are abroad, or you leave, those restrictions and their exceptions still govern your return.

Consular processing is a separate track. This order runs against USCIS. Visa adjudication at posts abroad is the State Department's function and is not governed by these memoranda.

The vetting remains. In its March alert USCIS listed what it adopted alongside the holds: shortened validity periods for certain Employment Authorization Documents so security checks recur more often; updated photograph reuse and biometric identity verification policies; increased social media and financial vetting and community interviews; automatic notification when biometrics generate a match or new criminal information surfaces; and a required final arrest-encounter review plus a check of the State Department's Consular Consolidated Database before final adjudication.

None of that is enjoined. "Normal course" now means normal course with all of it applied — a slower normal course than the one applicants remember.

What a hold actually costs

A hold is not a denial, and that is exactly what made it so damaging. A denial can be appealed, reopened, or refiled. A case that never moves produces no notice, no decision, and nothing to challenge. Meanwhile every clock attached to it keeps running.

Work authorization is the sharpest edge. An EAD renewal still pending when the current card expires is a job lost — and USCIS has said it deliberately shortened validity periods for certain EADs, so renewals come around more often and each one is another chance to land in a backlog.

Children age toward twenty-one while a petition or adjustment application sits still, with Child Status Protection Act consequences turning on dates nobody controlled. Naturalization applicants who passed the interview but never got a decision have spent a year unable to vote, unable to petition for relatives as citizens, unable to travel on a U.S. passport. Adjustment applicants have faced the ordinary advance parole and travel questions with an entry proclamation layered on top.

What USCIS says comes next

The August 28 alert closes by saying USCIS "will issue updated instructions pending further litigation developments." Those instructions have not been published.

So the legal obligation to resume adjudicating exists now, but the implementation — how the agency identifies held cases, in what order it releases them, how fast — has not been announced. Expect a lag between the order and visible movement on individual receipts, and expect it to vary by form type and service center.

What to do now

Confirm your case was actually held. Not every delayed case is a held case; processing times have lengthened across the board for unrelated reasons. Check your case status, gather your receipt notices, and compare your filing date against the posted processing time for that form at that office before concluding the memoranda are why.

Do not let a filing lapse while you wait. The injunction extends no deadline. Extensions and renewals still have to be filed on time. File EAD renewals as early as the regulations permit.

Keep a dated record. Filing date, receipt number, every notice, every inquiry and the response to it. That record is what supports a service request, a congressional inquiry, or a mandamus action under 28 U.S.C. § 1361 if the case still does not move.

Be careful about travel. The entry proclamations are untouched here. A resumed adjudication is not clearance to leave and return. Get advice specific to your status and nationality before booking anything.

Watch for the updated instructions. They will drive the practical sequencing, and they are also where any narrowing of the agency's reading of the order would appear.

Where this leaves you

The relief is real and it is broad. It is also preliminary, actively contested, and it restores a process rather than an outcome.

If you are a national of a covered country and you have been waiting without explanation, this is the moment to take stock: confirm what is actually pending, and decide whether the case needs affirmative action rather than more patience. The full docket in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Edlow is on CourtListener.

At Parikh & Prasad, PC, we track these developments closely and litigate delayed adjudications in federal court when a case requires it. If your application has been sitting without movement, contact us to review where it stands.

This post is attorney advertising and is provided for general information only. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Immigration law changes rapidly; consult a qualified immigration attorney about your specific situation.

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