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The Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) activated a new FBI security verification system last Monday that requires resubmitting the already archived fingerprints of millions of applicants for immigration benefits.
The order caused a pause in the adjudication of cases, affecting approximately 12 million pending applications in the system, according to a report by Univisión.
The spokesman for the agency, Zach Kahler, confirmed the measure in a statement: "USCIS has implemented new security controls to strengthen the verification and assessment of applicants, through expanded access to federal criminal databases.
"Processing continues as we implement these enhanced background checking requirements. Any delays in decision issuance should be brief and resolved quickly."
The measure is based on an executive order signed by Trump in February 2026, titled "Protection of National Security and the Well-Being of the United States and Its Citizens Against Criminal Actors and Other Public Safety Threats," which requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to access criminal background records held by federal criminal justice agencies, including the FBI.
An internal directive distributed during the week of April 21 instructs USCIS officials to resend pending immigration benefit applications—including asylum, permanent resident cards, and citizenship—to the new FBI system known as Next Generation Identification (NGI), and to "refrain from approving any pending cases that have not undergone these enhanced background checks," according to CBS News.
Applicants should not take any additional action, as the fingerprint forwarding is carried out internally by the agency officials themselves.
The affected applications include status adjustments (Form I-485), naturalizations (N-400), affirmative and defensive asylum claims, and sponsorship petitions for family members or fiancés of citizens or permanent residents.
Processing times were already declining before this new pause: the renewal of the permanent resident card took a minimum of 10.5 months; an I-130 petition for the spouse of a citizen took 62 months; and naturalization took between seven and ten months depending on the city.
By the close of the fiscal year 2025, on September 30, USCIS had accumulated 11,651,012 pending cases, compared to the 11.3 million recorded at the end of June of that same year.
For Cubans, the impact is particularly severe. Permanent residency approvals for Cubans collapsed by 99.8% between October 2024 and January 2026: from 10,984 approvals in February 2025 to just 15 in January 2026, with over 7,000 applications received that month.
In December 2025, the government had already paused all immigration processes for citizens from 19 restricted countries, including Cubans, halting the processing of residency and citizenship applications.
Immigration attorney Rosaly Chaviano explained that "being a Cuban national alone is enough to be part of this group of countries that has to be put on pause," and warned that "the position of ICE officials is that if a person has a pending residency, for them it's not sufficient" to avoid detention.
In March 2026, lawyers filed a class action federal lawsuit against USCIS for delays affecting over 100,000 Cuban residency applications under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
The detention of Cubans by ICE increased by 463% from October 2024 to January 2026, surpassing 1,000 monthly arrests by the end of 2025, while thousands of applicants remain in legal limbo with no resolution date.
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