April 2026 wait times by category, service center, and field office, plus the quarterly trend data that national averages bury.
If you're waiting on an adjustment of status decision, "how long does I-485 take" has no single honest answer. As of April 2026, Form I-485 processing time ranges from roughly 7.5 months at the fastest USCIS field offices to 42 months for T-visa-based adjustments. That spread is not a rounding error. It depends on your green card category, which USCIS office got your case, and which of the two dozen or so policy changes in 2025–2026 applied to you.
This guide breaks down current I-485 processing times using two data sets most write-ups don't combine: the near-real-time 80th-percentile numbers from USCIS, and the quarterly pending-inventory trends USCIS publishes through its Office of Performance and Quality. You need both. One tells you what people just ahead of you waited. The other tells you whether the queue is getting longer or shorter for people in your category. For the wider picture of what's driving the USCIS backlog in 2025, we've covered that separately.
Last updated: April 2026. We refresh this page each time USCIS releases new monthly or quarterly data.
Current I-485 processing times at a glance (April 2026)
Here are the most recent 80th-percentile numbers from USCIS, meaning the time within which 80% of cases finish. Your case can run faster or slower depending on the category, the office, and whether you're scheduled for an interview.
Boston, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Charlotte continue to run the fastest field offices for family-based cases, often finishing in under 10 months. New York, Newark, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco remain the slowest, with chronic interview backlogs pushing some cases past two years. For employment-based adjustments, Nebraska Service Center still outpaces Texas, and the Service Center Operations (SCOPS) queue for complex EB cases sits near 32 months.
Humanitarian-based I-485s rarely show up in the headline numbers. USCIS frequently marks these "N/A" in its public tool, but where data exists, asylum-based adjustments under INA § 209 run around 10 months at the median, while T-visa-based AOS runs about 42 months. That gap has widened sharply over the past year, for reasons covered below.
How USCIS calculates processing times (and why it's misleading)
The number you see on USCIS's processing times tool is not an average, not a median, and not a promise. It's the 80th-percentile completion time from the prior six months. Twenty percent of cases took longer, some of them much longer. USCIS also explicitly excludes two groups from this figure: cases held up by visa bulletin retrogression, and any case where premium processing applied (premium processing is not available for I-485 at all).
The practical consequences are awkward. Your case can exceed the posted time by many months and still be "within normal processing time" for complaint purposes. If your priority date retrogressed, those waits don't appear in the posted figure at all. And the numbers update monthly with a six-month lag, so a worsening trend only shows up in the tool long after applicants have felt it. The historic processing times table runs through February 28, 2026 and gives a better sense of the trend by category.
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I-485 processing time by category
I-485 applicants fall into four official USCIS categories: family-based, employment-based, humanitarian-based, and "other." USCIS reports performance quarterly for each category through its Office of Performance and Quality. The pattern through the first three quarters of FY2025 is one the national average completely hides.
Family-based I-485
Family-based cases are the largest slice of the pending queue: 589,287 pending at the end of Q3 FY2025, up from 548,621 at the start of the fiscal year. The growth in pending is modest (+7.4%), and approvals actually accelerated. USCIS approved 122,813 family-based I-485s in Q3 FY2025, a 46% jump from the 84,044 approved in Q1. That suggests USCIS shifted adjudication capacity toward family cases while other categories were held. Good news for filers in the short term, but remember: the approval rate reflects where USCIS chose to allocate officers, not a structural speed-up. If you're just starting and want to understand the underlying petition timeline, our I-130 processing time guide covers that piece.
For April 2026, the National Benefits Center average for family-based I-485 runs around 10.9 months. Boston clears cases in roughly 7.5 months. New York's 26 Federal Plaza office is running 20–22 months. Imperial Valley, California is near 25.5 months. The single biggest predictor of your wait is which field office is assigned based on your ZIP code at filing.
Employment-based I-485
For employment-based I-485, pending inventory actually fell 4.7% during the same window, from 181,732 to 173,106. But receipts fell faster: USCIS received just 22,622 EB I-485s in Q3 FY2025, down 43% from 39,680 in Q1. Demand didn't evaporate. The Department of State compressed filing windows for most of FY2025 by requiring Final Action Dates rather than the more permissive Dates for Filing chart. Applicants literally couldn't file.
April 2026 changed that dynamic abruptly. EB-2 India advanced roughly 10 months in a single bulletin (to July 15, 2014). EB-2 Rest of World, Mexico, and the Philippines became current. Large numbers of previously stuck applicants can now file. For a longer view on how the cutoffs work, see how the Visa Bulletin works; for what's moving right now, our April 2026 Visa Bulletin analysis and May 2026 analysis walk through the movement. DOS has explicitly warned that retrogression later in FY2026 is likely.
Current EB I-485 processing times: Nebraska Service Center around 9.8 months, Texas Service Center 13.5 months, National Benefits Center 15–17 months for cases requiring interview, and SCOPS about 32 months for complex files.
Humanitarian-based I-485
Humanitarian-based adjustments saw the biggest swings. Pending inventory grew 47.1% in three quarters, from 291,446 to 428,784. Approvals collapsed 78% quarter-over-quarter in Q3, from 70,592 to 15,642. This is not a processing speed issue. It's a policy freeze.
Executive Order 14163 (January 20, 2025) suspended refugee entry under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Presidential Proclamation 10998 (December 16, 2025; published December 19, 2025) imposed entry restrictions on certain foreign nationals. The specific USCIS memorandum numbers cited here should be removed unless they can be tied to a current official USCIS posting.
USCIS partially lifted the asylum-benefit hold for non-high-risk nationals on March 30, 2026. For T-visa and U-visa-based AOS, waits sit at 42 months and 14–28 months respectively. HRIFA and Cuban Adjustment Act cases are frequently "N/A" at the service-center level.
Other (HRIFA, Cuban Adjustment, Lautenberg, SIJ, DED)
The smallest category, usually called "All Other AOS" in USCIS historic data, covers HRIFA (Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act), the Cuban Adjustment Act, Lautenberg Amendment filings, Special Immigrant Juvenile cases, diplomats adjusting under INA § 101(a)(27)(K), and Deferred Enforced Departure parolees. Pending dropped slightly from 49,446 to 46,287 across FY2025 Q1 to Q3. Historic FY2025 medians for this category ran around 11.6 months, a big improvement from the FY2020 peak of 32.7 months, though individual file types can still run much longer.
Service center and field office breakdown
I-485 cases are split between service centers (Nebraska, Texas, Potomac, California) and field offices (83 locations nationwide), with the National Benefits Center acting as a pre-processing hub for most family-based and some employment-based cases. Which office gets your file depends on your category and ZIP code at the time of filing.
Fastest offices (April 2026): Boston (family, ~7.5 months), Salt Lake City, Seattle, Charlotte, and Nebraska Service Center for employment cases (~9.8 months).
Slowest offices: 26 Federal Plaza in NYC, Newark, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta. These are all high-volume field offices with chronic interview backlogs. Some NYC file-office waits hit 20–22 months even for relatively simple marriage-based cases.
A common assumption worth correcting: Texas Service Center is not faster than Nebraska Service Center for EB I-485s. NSC has historically run faster because it grants interview waivers at a higher rate for clean employment files. If you have any choice in the matter (for example, through a concurrent I-140 + I-485 filing where the I-140 is still pending), that detail matters.
If your office is one of the slower ones and you've just filed, expect the biometrics appointment within 2–6 weeks of filing, your I-765 EAD around 3–5 months, your I-131 Advance Parole around 6 months, and the I-485 interview (if required) anywhere from 8 months to 2+ years later. If you need to reschedule your biometrics, we've written a step-by-step guide to that process.
The FY2025 quarterly trend story
The quarterly data shows something the monthly numbers don't: total I-485 pending grew 15.5% in nine months, from 1,071,245 cases at the end of Q1 FY2025 to 1,237,464 at the end of Q3. Approvals fell 10.5% during the same window (190,629 → 170,703). Denials rose 21% (18,851 → 22,779).
That pattern would normally suggest a workforce problem or a funding cut. Neither fully explains what happened. USCIS received roughly the same volume each quarter (271,261 / 273,988 / 273,184). Officers didn't disappear. What changed was the mix of which cases USCIS chose to adjudicate.
Humanitarian approvals went from 72,311 in Q1 to 70,592 in Q2 to 15,642 in Q3. Family approvals went from 84,044 to 86,312 to 122,813. USCIS moved resources off humanitarian files (which were being held anyway) and onto family files. That's good news if you filed a marriage-based or other family-based I-485 in early 2025. It's catastrophic if you filed a refugee or asylee adjustment.
Employment-based approvals held steadier (30,183, 28,923, 32,248 across the three quarters), but receipts collapsed. The cause was not falling I-140 demand but locked visa bulletin availability, which tied most filers to the Final Action Dates chart for much of FY2025. The April 2026 forward movement (EB-2 India +10 months, EB-2 ROW current) is already reversing that receipt trend in real time.
The takeaway for any current applicant: the national 80th-percentile number hides a lot. Your real wait depends on your category, and your category's wait depends on what USCIS is doing with the other three categories that same quarter.
2025–2026 policy changes reshaping I-485 processing
Five policy changes in the past year have altered how long your I-485 takes and what happens to you during the wait.
Automatic EAD extensions still exist for many renewal applicants, including category C09 (pending adjustment of status). USCIS’s current Automatic Employment Authorization Document (EAD) Extension guidance continues to list C09 as eligible for an automatic extension of up to 540 days when the renewal is timely filed and all other requirements are met.
USCIS’s current published guidance still states that it increased the maximum EAD validity period to up to 5 years for certain categories, including adjustment applicants under INA 245. This post should not state that USCIS reduced C09 EAD validity to 18 months unless a current official USCIS or Federal Register source is added.
I-693 validity changed on June 11, 2025. USCIS clarified that a Form I-693 signed on or after Nov. 1, 2023, is valid only while the application it was submitted with remains pending. If that underlying application is withdrawn or denied, the I-693 is no longer valid for a future filing. That change does not mean a still-pending I-485 automatically needs a new medical exam solely because time has passed.
Proclamations 10949 and 10998 and the companion USCIS memos. Proclamation 10949 (June 4, 2025) and Proclamation 10998 (December 16, 2025, effective January 1, 2026) impose entry restrictions on 19 full-ban countries and 20 partial-ban countries. The USCIS memos PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0193 translate those restrictions into adjudicative holds on I-485, I-765, I-131, I-751, and I-589 for nationals of affected countries. USCIS partially lifted asylum-benefit holds for non-high-risk nationals on March 30, 2026. For context on the broader landscape, see our coverage of the Trump travel ban and who it affects and the State Department pause on immigrant visa processing for 75 countries.
CSPA reversion (August 15, 2025). USCIS reverted Child Status Protection Act age calculation from the Dates for Filing chart back to the Final Action Dates chart. That narrows the window in which a derivative child's age "freezes" and creates fresh aging-out risk for F2A and EB derivative beneficiaries approaching 21.
USCIS still accepts several payment methods for paper filings, including Form G-1450 (credit or debit card), Form G-1650 (ACH), money order, personal check, and cashier’s check.
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Visa Bulletin coordination: when can you actually file?
Processing time is only half the wait. The other half is waiting for your priority date to become current. For family-based F1, F2A, F2B, F3, and F4 categories, and for all employment-based categories, filing I-485 requires both an immediately available visa number and a current priority date.
USCIS tells you each month which chart you can use, the Final Action Dates chart or the Dates for Filing chart, on its adjustment of status filing charts page. For April 2026, EB-2 India jumped ten months in a single bulletin, and EB-2 Rest of World, Mexico, and the Philippines became current. Those are the largest one-month movements in several years.
The advance is real but somewhat artificial. Proclamations 10949 and 10998 have reduced ROW demand at consular processing posts, freeing visa numbers earlier in the fiscal year than normal. DOS has explicitly warned applicants that retrogression later in FY2026 is a strong possibility. If your priority date is current or near-current, filing sooner rather than later is usually the right move.
One persistent myth worth killing: your priority date becoming current does not speed up an I-485 that's already pending. It only unlocks approval. USCIS cannot approve a case without a visa number available at the moment of decision. If your date retrogresses while you're pending, USCIS will hold your case until it becomes current again.
Companion applications: EAD and Advance Parole
Most I-485 applicants file Form I-765 (work permit, category C09) and Form I-131 (Advance Parole) concurrently. The companion filing fees are $260 for I-765 and $630 for I-131, on top of the $1,440 I-485 fee for applicants 14 and older.
April 2026 medians for companion applications: I-765 C09 around 3.7 months, I-131 around 6.1 months. Combined EAD/AP cards ("combo cards") are issued when both applications clear around the same time. You can check your EAD application status five different ways once USCIS receipts your I-765.
The renewal math has gotten tighter. With EAD validity cut to 18 months (PA-2025-27) and the 540-day automatic extension removed (October 30, 2025 IFR), a typical I-485 applicant now files an EAD renewal while the original EAD still has 180+ days left. If you wait too long, you stop working. File 6 months ahead of expiration, not later.
Advance Parole travel while I-485 is pending is still available for most filers, but travel on AP after leaving the country requires the I-131 to have been approved before departure. Traveling without an approved AP (unless you hold a separate valid status like H-1B or L-1 with appropriate entry) is treated as abandonment of your I-485.
What to do if your I-485 is past normal processing time
USCIS considers your case "outside normal processing time" once the 80th-percentile figure for your category and office has elapsed. That's the threshold to start formal remedies. Escalate in roughly this order:
- Submit a case inquiry through your USCIS online account. This almost always returns "within normal processing time" or a stock pending-review response on the first inquiry, but it creates a record.
- Contact the CIS Ombudsman at dhs.gov/topics/cis-ombudsman if the case inquiry doesn't resolve within 30 days. The Ombudsman can sometimes unstick cases at specific field offices.
- Open a Congressional inquiry through your House Representative's office. Most Representatives have a constituent-services team that handles immigration cases. USCIS responds to these, though the answer is often "undergoing normal processing."
- File a writ of mandamus under 28 U.S.C. § 1361 and 5 U.S.C. § 706 if your case has been pending for an unreasonably long time, typically well past the 80th-percentile figure (often by 6+ months). Attorney fees run $3,000–$8,000. USCIS frequently adjudicates shortly after filing, which makes mandamus an expensive but effective queue-jump for applicants with genuinely stuck cases.
If your concern is the EAD or AP rather than the I-485 itself, USCIS accepts expedite requests for those based on severe financial loss, humanitarian reasons, or DHS interest. The I-485 itself is rarely expedited because premium processing is not available for adjustment of status, and the standard expedite criteria are narrow.
Top misconceptions about I-485 processing time
Several things applicants routinely believe that aren't true:
- "USCIS's posted processing time is my actual wait." It's the 80th percentile, calculated from completed cases in the prior six months, and it excludes visa-regressed cases and premium-processed filings. Complex cases routinely run 2–3x the posted figure.
- "Concurrent filing makes my I-485 decision faster." Concurrent filing (filing I-485 at the same time as the I-130 or I-140) only eliminates the gap between I-130/I-140 approval and I-485 filing. The I-485 adjudication time itself is the same.
- "EAD approval means my I-485 is close." Not even a little. EADs adjudicate on a separate track in 3–5 months. I-485 decisions commonly come 8–14+ months after EAD issuance.
- "A Congressional inquiry will speed up my case." Congressional inquiries typically return "undergoing normal processing" unless the case is genuinely outside posted times and USCIS cannot cite a specific reason for the delay.
- "I-140 premium processing will speed up my I-485." It only speeds up the I-140. Once the I-140 is approved, the I-485 queue position is unaffected. Premium processing is not available for I-485.
- "EAD renewals still auto-extend for 540 days." Not universally false. USCIS’s current guidance still lists multiple renewal categories, including C09 pending-adjustment applicants, as eligible for an automatic extension of up to 540 days when the renewal is timely filed and other requirements are met.
- "The 2023 CSPA rule still applies." USCIS reverted on August 15, 2025 to Final Action Dates for CSPA calculation. F2A and EB derivatives near 21 should recalculate immediately.
- "Texas Service Center is faster than Nebraska for EB." Reversed. NSC has historically been faster due to higher interview-waiver rates for clean employment files.
The bottom line
I-485 processing time in 2026 is best understood as a distribution, not a number. Family-based cases average 10–11 months at the NBC but stretch past two years at several big-city field offices. Employment-based cases run 10–16 months at the two main service centers and can hit 32 months at SCOPS. Humanitarian cases are effectively frozen for many nationalities under the December 2025 policy memos. The "other" category keeps chugging along at 11–12 months for most file types.
Your actual wait comes down to three things: which category you filed under, which USCIS office processes your case, and whether the policy environment has flagged your country or case type for extra review. You can estimate the first two from USCIS data. The third changes faster than USCIS's own processing-time tool updates.
We'll keep this page current as USCIS posts new monthly data, new quarterly Office of Performance and Quality reports, and any further policy memos.
Official Sources
This guide is based on current USCIS policy, federal regulations, and USCIS Office of Performance and Quality quarterly data. All information was verified against these official sources as of April 2026:
USCIS Resources
- USCIS Form I-485 Official Page
- Form I-485 Instructions
- USCIS Processing Times Tool
- USCIS Historic Processing Times
- USCIS Processing Times FAQ
- USCIS Immigration & Citizenship Data Portal
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 7 (Adjustment of Status)
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 8, Part B, Chapter 4 (I-693)
- USCIS AOS Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin
- USCIS Case Status Online
- USCIS Fee Schedule (Form G-1055)
USCIS Policy Alerts and Memoranda (2025–2026)
- I-693 Validity Update (June 11, 2025)
- Discretionary Factors Update (August 19, 2025)
- PM-602-0192, Hold and Review of High-Risk Country Applications (December 2, 2025)
- PA-2025-27, EAD Validity Reduction (December 4, 2025)
- DHS News Release: End of Automatic EAD Extension
- USCIS CSPA Reversion Alert (August 2025)
Federal Regulations
Immigration and Nationality Act
Department of State
Immigration law and USCIS processing data change frequently. We monitor USCIS policy updates, quarterly Office of Performance and Quality reports, and the monthly Visa Bulletin, and revise this guide whenever the underlying numbers or rules shift.