David J. Bier
The Trump administration has drastically reduced legal immigration from abroad, but it has simultaneously slashed grants of legal permanent residence to people already in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suspended processing many green card applications, allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest legal immigrants, including refugees, asylees, and spouses of US citizens.
Cutting green card approvals in half
The agency responsible—US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—has worked with ICE to set these legal immigrants up for arrests by failing to process their applications. Immigrants may apply for green cards—or lawful permanent residence—inside the United States, typically by converting from another temporary legal status or from refugee or asylee status. By obstructing their ability to receive green cards, USCIS degrades the rights of these applicants and may even cause them to lose their underlying status.
Over the course of the year, USCIS has cut grants of legal permanent residence by about half. The cuts have affected all categories except employment-based applicants, but USCIS has reserved the biggest cuts for the humanitarian green card categories: asylees, refugees, Cubans, and other (mostly crime victims).
Cutting green cards for family of US citizens
Start with family-sponsored immigrants, since their picture is the most nuanced. After a brief dip following Inauguration Day, the administration appears to have shifted adjudicators from other categories toward the family-sponsored cases, leading to a spike in approvals. But following the confirmation of Joseph Edlow to lead USCIS, the spike ended, and ultimately the number of approvals fell by 54 percent from July 2025 to January 2026. January 2026 approvals are now 22 percent below the January 2025 level.
Why this decline happened is more difficult to pin down than for the other categories. USCIS intentionally shed staff throughout the year, with total employment falling about 10 percent in 2025. Nonetheless, in September 2025, USCIS shifted resources into a new enforcement wing of the agency. In August 2025, USCIS stated it would increase interviews of family-based petitioners (the citizen or legal permanent resident sponsors). In November 2025, USCIS announced it would start using “country-specific” factors to weigh against approving applicants from certain countries. In December 2025, USCIS suspended all green card processing for 19 countries and extended it to 40 countries in January 2026.
This suspension of green card processing allows ICE to arrest immigrants with pending green card applications. We don’t know how often this happens, but the graph below shows how the administration was ramping up enforcement, including against the targeted 40 countries, even as it slashed green card approvals. While only a small fraction of ICE arrests hit relatives of US citizens, the throttling of green card issuances has enabled ICE to arrest their family members. The delays can even cause the immigrant’s underlying status to expire.
ICE has arrested many spouses of US citizens whose status had expired but who are otherwise eligible for green cards. Ukrainian Viktoriia Bulavina—initially allowed entry legally with parole status—was detained in front of her US citizen husband at a USCIS office in December 2025 after her Temporary Protected Status had expired (though she had a pending application to extend that status as well, which USCIS had not acted on). A Swedish student who graduated from a US university, married a US citizen, and had a pending family-based green card application was also detained after her status expired. An active-duty Navy sailor’s wife was detained in the same situation. There are many other such cases.
The law permits people who entered legally to adjust to permanent residence and receive a green card even if their initial temporary status expired, but the law does not prohibit ICE from detaining them—despite their potential eligibility for a green card. KPBS reports, “ICE is transferring people arrested at green card appointments to the Otay Mesa Detention Center—a privately owned facility where it costs taxpayers approximately $200 per day to keep someone detained.”
Ending Cuban green card approvals
As bad as the situation is for family of US citizens, Cuban immigrants have faced an even more concerted targeting. In late February 2025, USCIS suspended all immigration requests, including for permanent residence, Temporary Protected Status, employment authorization documents, and other immigration benefit requests, by applicants who entered under the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela parole processes, while canceling their underlying parole status—again to set them up for ICE arrests. Cubans were the most negatively affected because, under the Cuban Adjustment Act, they all qualified for permanent residence and green cards.
In December 2025, USCIS suspended all work on adjustments of status and other immigration benefit requests for Cubans, along with 18 other nationalities (later expanded to 40 total nationalities).
As a result of these actions, ICE is able to arrest Cuban parolees with green card applications pending. For instance, Jose Miguel Suri Hernández, who entered legally via parole in 2024, was still being detained in March 2026, despite being eligible for the Cuban Adjustment Act with an application pending. The sole reason for his detention is that USCIS is refusing to process his green card application, which has now been suspended for seven months. Although not all Cubans arrested by ICE are eligible to adjust their status, ending Cuban Adjustment Act green card approvals has certainly helped ICE to increase arrests of Cubans by 463 percent.
Ending refugee green card approvals
The most illegal and absurd collaboration between USCIS and ICE has occurred with respect to refugees. In March 2025, USCIS paused refugee and asylee green card applications for a period of about three weeks. Processing resumed at a much lower level. In December 2025, USCIS stopped virtually all approvals on refugee green cards, and in early January 2026, it announced Operation PARRIS, which it claimed would focus on reinterviewing 5,600 refugees in Minnesota who had not yet received lawful permanent residence.
In reality, in December 2025, as USCIS suspended green cards, ICE and USCIS had secretively reinterpreted an old statute to allow ICE to arrest refugees who had not yet received green cards, quietly rescinding a long-standing internal policy that forbade such arrests. Refugees cannot apply for green cards until they have been in the country for a year, and of course, by delaying the processing of these applications, USCIS allowed ICE to arrest the refugees whose legal status is unquestionable. In February 2026, ICE and USCIS director Edlow signed a joint memo permitting the arrest of refugees.
The law requires refugees to return to “custody” for “inspection and examination” after one year if they have not yet received legal permanent residence, while also prohibiting applying for legal permanent residence until one year of residence as a refugee. This means all refugees are technically exposed to arrest after one year. Rather than sending letters to these refugees asking them to appear for interviews voluntarily, USCIS sent ICE agents to their homes to drag them away from their families and send them to ICE detention facilities in Texas—not to interview them and approve or deny their green card applications, but to hold them indefinitely.
ICE shackled and took away Selamawit Mehari, an Eritrean refugee and single mother of three, in front of her children in her home. ICE sent her to Texas. Mehari and other refugees were dumped on the streets in Texas and left to find their way home. The New York Times reported on the arrest of a man from Moldova whom ICE arrested in Minneapolis and moved to Texas on January 16, 2026, despite—according to a judge’s later order releasing him—“ample evidence in support of his refugee status and his pending adjustment application.” One judge wrote about Te Eh Doh La, a Burmese refugee who entered legally and had properly filed an application for adjustment of status to permanent residence: “There is something particularly craven about transferring a nursing refugee mother out of state.”
A district court has temporarily blocked ICE from undertaking further arrests under Operation PARRIS. The court stated clearly: USCIS “could simply notify refugees of their adjustment interview and afford them the chance to attend voluntarily—summoning them only after the interview is scheduled.” ICE arrested approximately 150 refugees before the policy was blocked, but the suspension of green card issuances appears to have continued.
Conclusion
As I’ve explained before, the administration’s mass deportation strategy depends crucially on preventing immigrants from receiving or extending legal status. The mass cancellation of parole status for 1.5 million immigrants, the elimination of Temporary Protected Status for nearly a million more immigrants, the virtual elimination of asylum, and the suspension of various green card pathways have permitted ICE to increase arrests of people who would otherwise have had legal status. Removing their legal status is a necessary precondition for removing people from the country.