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The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on Monday a partial easing of the immigration pause affecting citizens from 39 countries considered high-risk, including Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti, lifting suspensions for specific categories such as work permits, asylum applications, and procedures related to medical professionals.
According to Telemundo, the measure comes more than three months after the Trump administration froze the processing of immigration applications for those 39 nations, a policy that halted over 12 million immigration cases and particularly impacted the Cuban community.
In an alert posted on its website, USCIS reiterated that it found "deficiencies" that led to some applications being approved despite the fact that "they should not have been." It announced that it has established an internal process to lift suspensions in individual or group cases, which requires thorough review by multiple offices.
Among the processes that would no longer be on hold are: certain employment authorization documents, asylum applications from countries not considered high risk, requests related to physicians, certain rescheduled oath ceremonies, international adoption forms, specific requests for special immigrant visas, and certain petitions filed by U.S. citizens.
Foreigners who underwent verification through Operation PARRIS, the program launched by the Department of Homeland Security to re-examine refugee cases through new checks, are also exempt from the pause.
However, the agency did not specify whether the resumption would apply to citizens from all 39 countries in its entirety or only to certain specific ones, leaving uncertainty for thousands of Cubans with pending processes.
The impact of the freeze on Cubans has been devastating. Permanent residency approvals fell by 99.8%, dropping from 10,984 in February 2025 to just 15 in January 2026, according to data from the Cato Institute, and over 100,000 cases of Cubans could be affected.
In parallel, the detentions of Cubans by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased by 463% from October 2024 to January 2026, exceeding 1,000 arrests per month.
This partial flexibility comes days after Federal Judge George L. Russell III from the District of Maryland ruled the indefinite suspension of green cards illegal last Tuesday, ordering the reactivation of applications for 83 plaintiffs and concluding that "USCIS has no discretion to not adjudicate cases at all."
Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar had also urged the Secretary of Homeland Security to resume citizenship and naturalization processes for Cubans and Venezuelans in South Florida, arguing that "they have complied with the law, passed all the filters, and earned it."
USCIS also indicated that it is working on a tiered assessment plan and expanded checks on criminal backgrounds, identity, and security controls, although the general freeze for the 39 high-risk countries remains in effect for most categories, and the agency did not provide a timeline for lifting the remaining restrictions.
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