What’s Happening
On October 5, 2026, a coalition of individuals, labor unions, higher education organizations, and immigration advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging two recent U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies affecting Adjustment of Status (AOS) and other immigration benefit applications. The lawsuit, American Association of University Professors et al. v. Mullin et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The lawsuit challenges two significant USCIS policy changes issued earlier this year:
The May 2026 Adjustment of Status Policy. USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199 directs officers to treat an applicant’s decision to pursue permanent residence through AOS in the United States, rather than through immigrant visa processing abroad, as a negative factor in the discretionary analysis. The lawsuit challenges USCIS’s characterization of AOS as an extraordinary form of relief and its requirement that applicants demonstrate sufficiently strong positive considerations to overcome that negative factor.
The August 2026 Evidence and Denial Policy. The second challenged policy, Policy Alert PA-2026-05, Evidence, RFEs, and NOIDs, gives USCIS officers broader discretion to deny immigration benefit requests without first issuing a Request for Evidence (RFE) or Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID) where required initial evidence is missing or the initial filing does not establish eligibility. The policy also applies to applications that were already pending when it took effect.
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