November 2026 Immigration Bulletin: Work Permit Gaps, Asylum Fees, PERM Suspensions, and the Fifth Circuit's Detention Ruling

Index

• DHS Makes the End of Automatic EAD Extensions Permanent
• The Annual Asylum Fee Rises to $105 in Court and at USCIS
• The Naturalization Backlog Passes 813,000 as Waits Near 13 Months
• USCIS Proposes to Stop Deferring to Prior Approvals on Extensions
• The Labor Department Suspends Eight Employers From PERM
• The Ninth Circuit Halts the Order to Open DV-2027 Registration
• The Supreme Court Declines to Restore Administrative Closure
• The Full Fifth Circuit Rejects Due Process Claims to a Bond Hearing
• Popular Articles
• Client Successes

October made several temporary measures permanent and moved some of the hardest questions in immigration law into federal court. This November 2026 immigration bulletin covers the final rule that ends automatic work permit extensions, the new $105 annual asylum fee, a naturalization backlog that has passed 813,000 cases, a USCIS proposal to stop deferring to prior approvals, and the Labor Department’s suspension of eight employers from PERM. It also explains three court orders that narrowed the options open to immigrants: the Ninth Circuit’s stay of the order to open DV-2027 registration, the Supreme Court’s refusal to restore administrative closure, and the full Fifth Circuit’s ruling on bond hearings for people who entered without inspection.

The thread running through the month is that the cost of waiting has shifted to the applicant. A work permit renewal that is not approved before the card expires now means a stop in employment. An unpaid annual asylum fee stands between an applicant and an approval. A citizenship application now waits close to 13 months on average. At the same time, three appellate rulings narrowed the relief families have relied on to correct delays and detention decisions.

These dates now decide which rules apply:

• October 1, 2026: new immigration court fees took effect, including the $105 annual asylum fee for cases pending before an immigration judge.
• October 14, 2026: DHS published the final rule ending automatic EAD extensions and a proposed rule that would end deference to prior approvals.
• October 16, 2026: new USCIS amounts for the annual asylum fee and for initial asylum, parole, and TPS work permits apply to filings postmarked on or after this date.
• October 23, 27, and 29, 2026: the Fifth Circuit, the Supreme Court, and the Ninth Circuit issued the three court orders discussed below.
• November 13, 2026: public comments on the deference proposal are due.

Each section of this November bulletin explains what changed, corrects details that have circulated inaccurately, and sets out what you can do now. For the developments that led into this month, see our October 2026 immigration bulletin.

DHS Makes the End of Automatic EAD Extensions Permanent

On October 14, 2026, DHS published a final rule titled Removal of Automatic Extensions for Certain Employment Authorization Documents (91 FR 65306). It adopts, without substantive change, the interim final rule that took effect on October 30, 2025. Until then, many applicants who filed a timely Form I-765 renewal could keep working for up to 540 days after the card expired while USCIS reviewed the renewal. That bridge is now permanently gone for most renewals.

• Who is affected: applicants who filed, or will file, a renewal on or after October 30, 2025 in the covered categories, including H-4 spouses, adjustment of status applicants, and asylum applicants.
• Who keeps the old extension: applicants whose renewals were properly filed before October 30, 2025.
• What stays the same: F-1 STEM OPT students keep their separate 180-day extension, and asylees, refugees, and others whose work authorization comes with their status can keep working after the card expires, using other Form I-9 documents.
• What the receipt now says: the I-797C receipt for an affected renewal states that it is not evidence of employment authorization, even with the expired card.

The backlog makes the timing serious. As of June 30, 2026, USCIS reported more than 432,000 EAD renewals pending for at least six months, including more than 91,000 pending for over 18 months. One detail has been widely misstated: USCIS generally recommends filing within the 180 days before the current card expires, but DHS states in the final rule that an otherwise eligible renewal will not be rejected or denied solely because it was filed earlier.

Federal Register: Read the DHS final rule ending automatic EAD extensions

The Annual Asylum Fee Rises to $105 in Court and at USCIS

The annual asylum fee was created by Congress in H.R. 1, the law signed on July 4, 2025, not by agency policy. It is owed for each year an asylum application remains pending, and the law requires an inflation adjustment every year. The fee started at $100 and rose to $102 in early 2026. USCIS and the immigration courts have now set their fiscal year 2027 amounts in separate notices:

• Annual asylum fee: $105, for USCIS payments made on or after October 16, 2026, and for cases before an immigration court since October 1, 2026.
• Initial work permit for asylum applicants, parolees, and TPS applicants: $570, up from $560, for USCIS filings postmarked on or after October 16.
• Unchanged: the $100 fee to file Form I-589 and the $275 fee to renew an asylum-based work permit.
• Wrong amount: a filing sent with the old fee after October 16 can be rejected.

Many families have heard that an unpaid fee automatically closes the case and leads to removal proceedings. The picture is more complicated:

• At USCIS: an April 2026 interim final rule let USCIS reject a pending asylum application, end the work permit, and start removal proceedings for nonpayment. On August 5, 2026, a federal court in Massachusetts stayed those consequences nationwide in VAM v. USCIS, and the government has appealed. The fee is still owed, and USCIS says it cannot approve an asylum application until it is paid.
• In immigration court: the Board of Immigration Appeals held in Matter of L-F-R- on July 24, 2026 that nonpayment should lead a judge to pretermit the asylum claim or treat it as abandoned.

Some clients have also seen their online status shift to list a decision rather than an interview as the next step, followed by a fee notice. A status change is not a decision, but a fee notice should be acted on promptly.

Federal Register: Read the USCIS notice on fiscal year 2027 H.R. 1 fee adjustments

The Naturalization Backlog Passes 813,000 as Waits Near 13 Months

Naturalization approvals have fallen to their lowest level in years while the pending caseload keeps growing. USCIS’s monthly figures show approvals dropping for a second straight month:

• Pending applications: 813,453 Forms N-400 at the end of August 2026, up from 744,412 in June.
• Long waits: 513,462 of those cases had been pending for more than six months.
• Approvals: 15,349 in August, down from 18,439 in June.
• Processing time: an average of 12.7 months.

The Washington Post reported that the backlog stood at about 500,000 cases at the start of the current administration, which puts the increase above 60 percent, and that the average wait has roughly doubled from about six months in August 2025. Approvals from January through August 2026 were down 72 percent from the same period a year earlier. USCIS has not explained the decline in its published data, and attorneys interviewed by the Post described interviews stalling.

One point needs correcting. Higher fees are not part of this story: the N-400 filing fee remains $760 on paper and $710 online. DHS proposed raising it in June 2026, but that proposal has not taken effect.

USCIS: Read USCIS immigration and citizenship data

USCIS Proposes to Stop Deferring to Prior Approvals on Extensions

When an officer reviews an extension for the same employer, the same worker, and the same facts, the current rule generally directs the officer to follow the earlier approval. On October 14, 2026, DHS proposed removing that rule. The notice of proposed rulemaking, Removing Deference to Prior USCIS Determinations of Eligibility (91 FR 65119), would delete 8 CFR 214.1(c)(5), which tells officers to defer to a prior Form I-129 approval unless there was a material error, a material change, or new information that undermines eligibility.

• Status: this is only a proposal. The current deference rule stays in force until DHS publishes a final rule and it takes effect.
• Scope: it concerns Form I-129 extension petitions, such as H-1B, L-1, and O-1 extensions, not every employment-based filing.
• What would change: officers could still consider an earlier approval but would no longer be required to follow it.
• Deadline: public comments are due November 13, 2026.

The policy has changed direction before. USCIS first adopted deference in a 2004 memorandum, rescinded it in October 2017, restored it in the Policy Manual in April 2021, and wrote it into the regulations in December 2024. In our practice, extensions are already being reviewed closely, so a final rule would largely put on paper an approach many employers already experience.

Federal Register: Read the DHS proposed rule on removing deference to prior approvals

The Labor Department Suspends Eight Employers From PERM

On October 8, 2026, at a White House press conference on visa fraud led by Vice President JD Vance, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that the Department of Labor would neither accept new nor process pending permanent labor certification applications involving eight companies: Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini. PERM is the labor market test that most employer-sponsored EB-2 and EB-3 green cards must pass before an I-140 petition can be filed.

• The stated reasons: multiple active federal investigations for Microsoft and Adobe, and overall filing volume for the six IT services firms. Officials said the eight together have received more than 100,000 labor certifications since 2009.
• The layoff argument: the Vice President said Microsoft laid off about 6,000 U.S. workers last year while obtaining about 6,300 H-1B approvals. Microsoft responded that 80 percent of its H-1B filings in the last fiscal year were extensions or changes of status for current employees.
• Duration and status: no end date has been announced, no written notice had been issued as of mid-October, and the action appears to be a suspension rather than a debarment, with no finding of wrongdoing.

The suspension is narrower than many early reports suggested. It covers only the Labor Department’s PERM step: H-1B filings were not suspended, approved immigrant petitions were not disturbed, and PERM remains open to every other employer. Placing H-1B workers at client sites, a common model for IT services firms, remains lawful when the employer meets the labor condition application and petition requirements.

The White House: Watch the October 8 press conference announcing the PERM suspensions

The Ninth Circuit Halts the Order to Open DV-2027 Registration

The Diversity Visa lottery normally accepts entries in October and November. For DV-2027, that window never opened. On November 5, 2025, the State Department said it was changing the entry process and would announce registration dates as soon as practicable, and in December 2025 it paused the issuance of diversity visas. A year later, no DV-2027 entries have been accepted.

• August 2026: Red Eagle Law, an immigration law firm in San Diego County, sued Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the Southern District of California.
• October 14, 2026: Judge Jinsook Ohta issued a preliminary injunction. Under the revised schedule, the Department had to announce registration by October 29, open it by November 1 for 30 days, and notify selected entrants by December 3.
• October 29, 2026: the Ninth Circuit stayed the injunction pending appeal (No. 26-6943). It found the government likely to win because a law firm suing on its own behalf falls outside the interests the diversity visa statute protects. One judge would also have found that the firm lacked constitutional standing.

As a result, DV-2027 registration remains closed. The appeals court did not decide whether the State Department’s inaction is lawful, and it noted that no prospective entrant had joined the case, leaving open how a challenge brought by applicants would fare. The DV-2027 visa period still ends on September 30, 2027, so the time left for any future selectees shrinks every month. For DV-2026, a federal court lifted the issuance pause on August 28, 2026, but the September 30 deadline was not extended.

U.S. Department of State: Read the State Department notice on the DV-2027 entry period

The Supreme Court Declines to Restore Administrative Closure

For decades, immigration judges used administrative closure to take a removal case off the active calendar without deciding it, most often while the person pursued another form of relief with USCIS, such as a family petition or a U visa. A 2024 Justice Department rule wrote that authority into the regulations. In June 2026, at the joint request of Texas and the federal government, Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas entered a judgment blocking that rule nationwide.

• Who challenged the judgment: Baltimore, New Haven, Columbus, and Centro Legal de la Raza asked to join the case to defend the rule. They were turned away, and the Fifth Circuit refused to pause the judgment.
• What the Supreme Court did: on October 27, 2026, it denied their emergency application in City of Baltimore v. Texas (No. 26A500) in a brief order, with no explanation and no noted dissent.
• What it did not do: it did not rule on whether administrative closure is lawful. The appeal continues in the Fifth Circuit.

Headlines saying the Supreme Court banned administrative closure overstate the order, but its practical effect is real: judges cannot rely on the 2024 rule while the appeal continues. The Justice Department has said the judgment applies going forward and does not automatically reopen cases already closed, although advocates report that some immigration courts have returned closed cases to active calendars.

U.S. Supreme Court: Read the docket in City of Baltimore v. Texas

The Full Fifth Circuit Rejects Due Process Claims to a Bond Hearing

The Fifth Circuit covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which together hold the largest detained population of any circuit. Earlier this year, in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, the court accepted the government’s reading that people who entered without inspection are held under a mandatory detention provision and are not eligible for a bond hearing under the statute. After that ruling, habeas petitions in the circuit, including ours, relied on the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment instead, and district courts continued to grant them.

• July 2, 2026: a three-judge panel held that due process requires a bond hearing within 90 days for people held under the new policy.
• July 10, 2026: the full court vacated that decision and agreed to rehear the case.
• October 23, 2026: in Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega, the en banc court ruled 10 to 7 that people who were never admitted have no constitutional right to a bond hearing beyond what Congress provided, reversing release orders for three men who had lived in Texas for over a decade. Judge Leslie Southwick argued in dissent that admission status does not decide when due process applies.

The decision is binding in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The statutory question is now before the Supreme Court, which agreed on October 1 to hear Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha (No. 26-104). The case asks whether 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A) requires detention of people present without admission while their removal cases proceed; the Fifth Circuit’s answer conflicts with rulings from nine other circuits. No argument date has been set. A ruling for the government would extend mandatory detention nationwide, while a ruling for Mr. Barbosa da Cunha would restore bond hearings under the statute, including in the Fifth Circuit.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Read the en banc decision in Sosnava Rodriguez v. Ortega

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Client Successes

Nine Delayed Cases That Federal Lawsuits Set in Motion

Each of these clients had waited months or years with no decision before we filed a mandamus lawsuit asking a federal court to compel USCIS to act.

An asylum case approved after more than four years. A citizen of Azerbaijan had waited more than four years and three months on his Form I-589 at the Arlington Asylum Office. After we filed suit in the Eastern District of Virginia on May 27, 2026, USCIS scheduled his interview. We helped him update the file, he was interviewed on July 29, and his application was approved on October 10, 2026.

A green card, and approvals for two children. After asylum was granted, our client and the client’s spouse were waiting on asylee-based Forms I-485, and I-730 petitions for their two children had been pending about 18 months. The client’s I-485, filed on May 2, 2025, had waited about 15 months when we filed suit in the Eastern District of Virginia on August 12, 2026. USCIS interviewed the children, approved both I-730 petitions, and mailed the client’s green card on October 16, 2026.

An F2A petition approved after the family spent two years apart. A client’s wife and young child were living abroad while his F2A Form I-130, filed on June 13, 2024, remained undecided. After more than two years, we filed suit in the Southern District of Florida on August 28, 2026. USCIS soon scheduled an in-person interview at the Miami Field Office for October 19, 2026, and the petition was approved.

A family petition approved after careful interview preparation. A couple filed a family-based Form I-130 on March 3, 2025. About 17 months later, we filed suit in the Northern District of Texas on August 21, 2026, and USCIS called them for an interview at the Dallas Field Office. We prepared them, reviewed the documents they needed to bring, worked through questions about their immigration history, and represented them at the October 19 interview. USCIS has since approved the I-130.

Three and a half years and two denied expedite requests, then an approval. A client filed Forms I-130 and I-485 in January 2023. Two expedite requests were denied, and the case stalled at the interview stage. We filed suit in the Central District of California on July 22, 2026, the interview took place on September 29, 2026, and the I-485 was approved.

An H-4 work permit produced within a month of filing suit. An Indian national whose H-4 status had already been approved waited eight months on the related Form I-765, filed on January 13, 2026. We filed suit in the Western District of Washington on September 24, 2026, and USCIS produced the new work permit card on October 17, 2026. Our guide to H-4 EAD delays explains when a pending work permit is ready for federal court.

A work permit mailed after 16 months. A client filed Form I-765 on May 7, 2025. After nearly 16 months, we filed suit in the Northern District of California on September 1, 2026, and the card was mailed on October 16, 2026.

A green card interview, with a travel document caught in the same delay. An asylee filed Form I-485 on August 14, 2024 and saw little progress for about two years after biometrics. His pending Form I-131 travel document was held up as well. We filed suit in the District of New Jersey on August 28, 2026, and USCIS scheduled his I-485 interview for October 19, 2026.

An interview on the way after 21 months. A client granted asylum in May 2024 filed an asylee-based Form I-485 on December 6, 2024 and saw no movement. After about 21 months, we filed suit in the District of Kansas on September 16, 2026, and USCIS has scheduled an interview. We are waiting for the formal notice and will follow the case through a decision.

Every case turns on its own facts, and filing suit does not guarantee a particular result. What these cases share is a long, documented delay that a federal judge could measure.

For a personalized evaluation of your U.S. immigration case, get in touch with our team. We’ll review your situation thoroughly and recommend the strategy that fits your circumstances best.

Phone: +1 (862) 799-2200 | Email: info@gozellaw.com

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