Daily Digest, September 10, 2026: A Filing Says No One Has Left Administrative Processing — While Case Dates Keep Moving

A filing made yesterday in the litigation over the 75-country immigrant visa pause says something blunt: nineteen days after the order vacating that pause, not one of the 43,000-plus affected applicants has actually been taken out of administrative processing. We have not read the filing ourselves. This is reported secondhand, so treat the wording as reported rather than established.

What the filing is said to say

The plaintiffs' response to the government's 8 September status report reportedly states that no one, not any plaintiff nor any of the applicants refused under the pause, has in fact had their case taken out of administrative processing. It adds that the department is still developing implementation guidance, and that immigrant visa appointments are still being pushed back through September.

The sharper point is about re-vetting. Plaintiffs say the government now appears to tie implementation to a new public-charge training programme, which they read as inconsistent with what was told to the court on 31 August. If that holds, the order and the queue are two different things, and only one of them has moved.

Meanwhile, case dates are moving

Here is the tension worth sitting with. Over the same days, applicants have been reporting that their case's last-updated date changed: an F2A case interviewed in July at a post in Cameroon, one interviewed on 19 August at a post in Brazil, another interviewed on 20 August.

It is tempting to read a date change as your case moving. Our data says be careful. One applicant following an EB-3 case reports touches on 17 August, then 31 August, then 8 September, a roughly fortnightly rhythm on a case that has not resolved. Another put it flatly: files in administrative processing are time-sensitive, so someone has to open them periodically.

We have argued before that a touch is a real touch, and we still think so. We hold 48 records whose last-updated date sat still for months at a stretch, which a field that advanced by itself could not produce. But a human opened the file and the case is leaving processing are not the same claim, and this week is the clearest sign yet that the two can come apart.

A slip you cannot fix with a document

One case added today breaks the usual pattern. An applicant whose self-petition was intended as an EB-2 national interest waiver had it approved under a different classification: skilled worker. At the interview the officer ticked "other" and wrote a request for a labour certification or a job offer, documents that would have to exist under that classification and do not.

Every other slip in our data asks for something the applicant can go and obtain. This one cannot be cured at the counter, because the problem is upstream in the petition. If you are waiting on a slip, it is worth reading the classification line on your own approval notice.

Where the numbers stand

We now hold 56 cancellation reports across 21 posts. Thirty-three were September appointments, and two of those have replacement dates, both at London and both moved to 11 September. Across the whole set there are nine confirmed pairs, with gaps running from 8 to 70 days.

Also recorded today: a K-1 at London still open 21 days after a slip the officer said would take a few days, and an F-1 at New Delhi seven days into a social-media check with passport and I-20 retained. The figures here are crowdsourced and anonymised, and they describe what people chose to report, which is not the same as what is happening everywhere.