The Trump administration has imposed an immediate “adjudicative hold” on every immigration benefit application filed by nationals of 19 mostly African, Middle-Eastern and Caribbean countries. In a policy memorandum quietly posted late on 2 December, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ordered officers to stop adjudicating green-card, naturalization, asylum, refugee and work-permit cases originating from the listed countries and to reopen certain cases that were already approved. The directive follows the 24 November shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., for which an Afghan asylum grantee has been charged, and expands a June 2025 presidential proclamation that largely barred the same countries from receiving new immigrant or non-immigrant visas.
Under the memo, every pending or reopened file must undergo a new national-security review that can include additional biometrics, a second interview and inter-agency vetting by DHS, the FBI and the intelligence community. Applicants who fail to appear for the re-interview will see their cases denied and may face removal proceedings. USCIS says the pause is needed to ‘re-establish confidence that foreign nationals pose no threat,’ but immigration lawyers report hundreds of oath ceremonies and adjustment interviews already cancelled this week, plunging families and employers into limbo.
![USCIS halts all immigration applications from 19 ‘high-risk’ countries]()
The hold affects Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. While most business-immigration demand from those nations is small, large U.S. hospital chains, IT consultancies and oil-field services firms say dozens of doctors, engineers and specialists were scheduled to start work in January and are now stuck abroad. Global mobility managers should prepare for project delays and budget for premium-processing upgrades or alternative nationalities where possible.
The decision is likely to be challenged in court. Critics argue USCIS exceeded its statutory authority by suspending adjudications en masse instead of reviewing cases individually, and point out that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president— not USCIS— the power to exclude classes of immigrants. With the 2026 H-1B registration season due to open in February, companies fear the freeze could portend wider restrictions on legal immigration in an election year.
Practical tip: Identify employees or applicants born in any of the 19 countries—even dual nationals— and brief them on possible interview recalls and travel disruptions. Encourage affected foreign nationals inside the United States to avoid international travel until their status is clarified and to keep proof of lawful presence on hand in case of internal enforcement checks.
Under the memo, every pending or reopened file must undergo a new national-security review that can include additional biometrics, a second interview and inter-agency vetting by DHS, the FBI and the intelligence community. Applicants who fail to appear for the re-interview will see their cases denied and may face removal proceedings. USCIS says the pause is needed to ‘re-establish confidence that foreign nationals pose no threat,’ but immigration lawyers report hundreds of oath ceremonies and adjustment interviews already cancelled this week, plunging families and employers into limbo.
The hold affects Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. While most business-immigration demand from those nations is small, large U.S. hospital chains, IT consultancies and oil-field services firms say dozens of doctors, engineers and specialists were scheduled to start work in January and are now stuck abroad. Global mobility managers should prepare for project delays and budget for premium-processing upgrades or alternative nationalities where possible.
The decision is likely to be challenged in court. Critics argue USCIS exceeded its statutory authority by suspending adjudications en masse instead of reviewing cases individually, and point out that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president— not USCIS— the power to exclude classes of immigrants. With the 2026 H-1B registration season due to open in February, companies fear the freeze could portend wider restrictions on legal immigration in an election year.
Practical tip: Identify employees or applicants born in any of the 19 countries—even dual nationals— and brief them on possible interview recalls and travel disruptions. Encourage affected foreign nationals inside the United States to avoid international travel until their status is clarified and to keep proof of lawful presence on hand in case of internal enforcement checks.
