Daily Digest, September 16, 2026: Eighty Minutes at the Window — the Re-Interview, Itemised

Today brings the most detailed account yet of what a pause-refused applicant faces when a post calls them back, and it ends in an approval. Also: a date on the docket, and cancellations still piling up at the posts that are not calling anyone.

The re-interview, itemised

A spouse-visa applicant in Brazil, refused solely under the pause after a June interview, was emailed on Friday 11 September for a Monday morning re-interview. It ran about eighty minutes. As relayed secondhand, the officer worked from a printed checklist: the rescheduling email, a contact sheet with the US address, the 2025 return and W-2, health insurance, savings and property on both sides with values, debts, an emergency fund, education and work history, employment plans in the United States and what they are if English is weak, health conditions, whether either party had ever received public assistance, and photographs of the couple. Several questions repeated the first interview. She was approved and left her passport for issuance; about four others were there for the same reason.

That is the third approval we hold since the cable and the first with the full question list. It matches last week's questionnaire almost line by line.

Who is being called

One applicant has done the arithmetic on the three suits: roughly 1,548 named plaintiffs across them, about 3.6 percent of the 43,000 pause refusals. Every callback reported so far has been a named plaintiff, a federal employee's spouse, or unstated. From Ankara: only plaintiffs have received emails, and they are being interviewed. From Tashkent: a diversity visa applicant interviewed in January has had nothing, with the visa year ending in two weeks. We cannot verify the plaintiff-only theory. We can say that no non-plaintiff has yet described their own callback to us.

A date on the docket

In the lead case the judge has ordered a joint status letter by 30 September proposing a schedule, because the plaintiffs intend to amend their complaint. An amendment could fold in the re-interview and public-charge procedures now being applied; nobody outside the parties knows yet. The stay motion is still pending.

Cancellations at the posts that are not calling

Tokyo reissued a cancelled 10 September diversity visa interview for the 17th, then cancelled the 17th the next day. Mumbai turned away a spouse-visa applicant at the door on the 15th with no email sent, the eighth turned-away case we hold. Kyiv pulled a 24 September diversity visa date on 9 September with no replacement, and separately turned a K-1 applicant away in person. Casablanca has three K-1 dates from 1, 8 and 15 September rescheduled with nothing offered. London's medical clinic told a caller that all post-medical document reviews are cancelled because the post is closed, and a K-1 interview there for the 17th was pulled. Applicants at Tirana report that the last-updated date moves the day after they email the post; someone opens the file, and that is all it means.

Outside the pause

An H-1B applicant at Islamabad is at day 97 after a June interview that asked for employer tax documents and then the whole petition. A visitor-visa drop box case in Paris has sat at Refused since 1 September with no request. A spouse case at London is 64 days out on domicile evidence, and one at Islamabad has been in processing since September 2025, four months before the pause began.

Where the numbers stand

Seventy-three cancellation reports across 25 posts. Forty-six were September appointments and three have replacement dates. Ten confirmed pairs, gaps of 8 to 70 days. Eleven records added today. In the re-check of 29 older open cases, two resolved: one approved at Dakar, one refused at Tashkent. The figures are crowdsourced and anonymised; they describe what people chose to report.