Logjam of U.S. immigration applications puts millions at greater risk of deportation

Deep Dive Immigration Logjam of U.S. immigration applications puts millions at greater risk of deportation April 17, 20265:00 AM ET By  Ximena Bustillo ,  Anusha Mathur In June 2025, people line up outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, which houses offices for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption toggle caption Damian Dovarganes/AP Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly. Millions of immigrants are stuck in legal limbo, waiting to change their legal status under the second Trump administration, an NPR analysis shows, leaving more of them vulnerable to deportation. Since the start of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken longer and longer to process applications, meaning an increasing number of people wait months without confirmation that their application was received — let alone reviewed. An NPR review of data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that processes and approves immigration applications, shows that nearly 12 million applications for immigration services, such as applying for citizenship, a work permit or other permission to live in the U.S., await a decision. Sponsor Message The ballooning number of pending requests, which saw a jump in the first three months of the second Trump administration, illustrate one lever of the Trump administration's overall strategy to slow down legal migration. Immigrants are struggling to even get the government to acknowledge it received their applications — which leaves people at greater risk of being deported. "That is a really incredible representation of what this administration is trying to do when it comes to immigration. It's 'throttle everything, focus entirely on deportations and arrests as your measure of success,'" said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. "If those are your only measures of succe...