An NPR analysis shows that millions of immigrants are stuck in legal limbo, waiting to change their legal status under the second Trump administration, leaving more of them vulnerable to deportation. Since the start of last year, the Department of Homeland Security 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.

The analysis of data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reveals 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. 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's administration's overall strategy to slow down legal migration.

What the Right Is Saying

Supporters of the administration's approach say stricter vetting is necessary for national security and argue the backlog demonstrates a system in need of fundamental reform. Elizabeth Jacobs, director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restricting immigration, said the sharp increase in backlog could stem from the administration cutting off other programs that provided legal status but did not rely on USCIS, such as applications for humanitarian parole.

Jacobs said there are concerns with high backlogs on both sides — for the government and for immigrants. "Processing immigration benefits efficiently is in both the interests of immigrants and this administration with their enforcement priorities because the longer someone has a pending application, not only are they denied those benefits but could be incurring unlawful presence," Jacobs said.

Brandy Perez Carbaugh, former research associate at the Border Security and Immigration Center of the Heritage Foundation, said the backlog highlights a need for more scrutiny in reviewing applications. "The 11 million pending immigration benefit applications show that our immigration system is not manageable. We need to pause taking in more applications until the backlogs decrease to a manageable level — each year," Perez Carbaugh said, adding that the agency should focus on addressing fraud in immigration applications. "The U.S. immigration system is for Americans, not the rest of the world."

Matthew Tragesser, spokesman for USCIS, said this administration has implemented screening and vetting processes that the previous administration overlooked. "For years, the Biden administration prioritized rubber-stamping naturalization applications with minimal vetting," Tragesser said in a statement to NPR.

What the Left Is Saying

Immigration advocates and progressive analysts say the backlog represents a deliberate strategy to throttle legal immigration while focusing on deportations. David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said the backlog reflects an administration prioritizing enforcement metrics over processing applications that could protect people from removal.

"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,'" Bier said. "If those are your only measures of success, then who cares about opening applications that could prevent someone from being arrested and prevent someone from having to self-deport?"

Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, said the data shows the administration is slow-walking or denying opportunities for people to adjust their legal status. "We are beginning to see the manifestation of data that proves that this administration is slow-walking or even denying the opportunity for these people to adjust," Melaku said.

Immigration attorneys report clients facing immediate anxiety about whether their applications were even received. Luis Cortes Romero, an immigration attorney in Seattle, said one of his clients was denied an interview for his green card in January due to a paperwork delay after having already waited a year, and it has yet to be rescheduled.

What the Numbers Show

The 11.6 million pending applications in the backlog include forms to become a citizen, acquire a green card, work or seek asylum. There are also 247,974 applications in what USCIS calls the frontlog, tracked separately — applications that have been submitted but the agency has not physically opened and assigned a category.

The backlog jumped by 2 million in the first year of the second Trump administration, more than the increase in all four years of President Trump's first term. The number has grown steadily over the last decade, more than doubling since October 2016.

Quarterly data shows the frontlog number was zero in 2023, before jumping to 77,291 by the end of March 2024. During the first three months of the Trump administration, the number jumped to 34,028. By the end of September 2025, USCIS reported 247,974 cases in the frontlog.

In the second half of last year, the Trump administration paused many application reviews, including all asylum applications, which restarted only in late March. The administration also paused reviews of all immigration applications for those from 39 countries on a travel ban list.

Renata Castro, an immigration attorney with clients around the country, said immigrants may have to wait up to eight months before USCIS even confirms it got their application. Immigration judges sometimes pressure attorneys to produce a receipt document that the government cannot issue, threatening clients with deportation.

The Bottom Line

The growing backlog of immigration applications represents a significant shift in how the U.S. processes legal migration, with implications for both immigrants seeking legal status and the government's enforcement priorities. Immigrants with pending applications face heightened vulnerability to deportation, particularly those whose cases have not even been acknowledged by the agency.

The administration says tougher vetting processes are necessary for national security, while critics argue the delays serve as a de facto barrier to legal immigration. What remains clear is that nearly 12 million applications remain in limbo, leaving millions in uncertainty about their legal future in the United States.