Weekly Brief
U.S. Immigration Law
Week of October 5 – October 11, 2026 · Full-spectrum coverage
Sources: USCIS newsroom, Policy Manual updates and Forms Updates (read through a text-extraction proxy; direct fetch returns 403) · DOS Visa Bulletin & visa news · DOL/OFLC news and FLAG processing times · Federal Register API, queried by agency and by comment-closing date (DHS, USCIS, ICE, CBP, DOS, DOL, ETA, EOIR) · USCIS AAO non-precedent repository (B2, B5, D8, D9) · BIA precedent, Volume 30 · EOIR notices · Supreme Court orders and dockets · AILA · BAL, Ogletree, Jackson Lewis, Greenberg Traurig, WR Immigration · Cyrus Mehta · ImmigrationProf · National Law Review
Deadline calendar · next 60 days
| Date | Item | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Tue Oct 13 | Comments close tomorrow — DHS Mandatory Electronic Filing (e-Filing) interim final rule, 91 FR 51924, FR Doc. 2026-16313, RIN 1615-AD19, Docket USCIS-2026-0232. Already effective since August 11. Lets USCIS mandate e-filing for any benefit request e-fileable for 180 days or more, after website notice and a 60-day grace period. | Comment |
| Tue Oct 13 | Charlotte Asylum Office assumes jurisdiction over affirmative asylum applicants residing in North Carolina and South Carolina. 128 South Tryon Street, Suite 600. Appointment only; no walk-ins. | Effective date |
| Wed Oct 14 | Comments close — USCIS information collection, Petition to Remove the Conditions on Residence (Form I-751), 91 FR 58160. | Comment |
| Fri Oct 16 | FY2027 H.R. 1 fees effective. 91 FR 62540, FR Doc. 2026-20187. Any benefit request postmarked on or after this date without the proper fee will be rejected. Reaches the asylum, parole and TPS fee lines only — not I-129, I-140, I-907 or the I-485 base fee. Companion CBP and ICE notices take effect the same day. | Fee change |
| Mon Oct 19 | Comments close — two USCIS generic information collections published September 17, 91 FR 58911 and 58912. | Comment |
| Tue Oct 20 | Comments close — USCIS Genealogy Program Regulations To Clarify the Impact of Federal Records Requirements NPRM, 91 FR 54252. Also: joint case management statement due in Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454 (N.D. Cal.), the $100,000 H-1B payment case. Court date carried forward from last week. | Comment / court |
| Wed Oct 21 | Response due — District of Columbia's brief in Genalo v. District of Columbia, No. 26-379 (S. Ct.). Carried forward. | Court deadline |
| Fri Oct 23 | USCIS Policy Alert PA-2026-15 takes effect — narrowed definition of “day,” applying to paper filings received on or after this date. Day-counted deadlines (RFE and NOID responses, the 30- and 33-day I-290B windows) still roll to the next business day. Event-triggered deadlines — a 21st birthday, the one-year asylum anniversary — no longer roll. Electronic filings get no rollover at all. Alert text read in full this week. Also: petitioners' brief due in DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426. | Effective date |
| Mon Oct 26 | SCOTUS: deadline for the petitioner in Zeledon Escobar v. Blanche, No. 26-5183, to pay the docketing fee and file a compliant petition. Also effective: DOL rescission of the Executive Order 11246 implementing regulations. Carried forward. | Court deadline |
| Tue Oct 27 | Case management conference — Global Nurse Force v. Trump, N.D. Cal. Carried forward. | Court date |
| Thu Oct 29 | Comments close — ICE information collection, Designation of Attorney in Fact, 91 FR 61431. | Comment |
| Wed Nov 4 | Comments close — ICE Suspicious/Criminal Activity Tip Reporting collection revision, 91 FR 63301, published October 5. | Comment |
| Mon Nov 9 | Form I-129 edition cutover. USCIS will accept only the 09/09/26 edition for filings postmarked or electronically submitted on or after this date; the 02/27/26 edition is rejected. Reaches every O-1A, O-2, P-1A and P-1S petition. Verified this week against the USCIS I-129 page itself, which states it twice. | Form edition |
| Mon Nov 9 | Comments close — ICE Optional Practical Training Fees NPRM, 91 FR 64566, FR Doc. 2026-20660, RIN 1653-AB01, Docket ICEB-2026-0100. $70,000 first OPT, $30,000 each subsequent including STEM OPT. | Comment |
| Tue Nov 10 | Comments close — DHS NPRM Eliminating the Discretionary 60-Day Grace Period, 91 FR 57807, FR Doc. 2026-18631, RIN 1615-AD22. Would delete 8 CFR 214.1(l)(2) for E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN and their dependents. P-1 is not on the list. | Comment |
| Fri Nov 13 | Comments close — batch of USCIS information collections published September 14, including Form I-140 and Form I-129, extensions without change. Carried forward from last week. | Comment |
| Mon Nov 16 | Respondents' brief due — DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426 (S. Ct.). Carried forward. | Court deadline |
| Tue Nov 17 | Comments close — DOS 60-day notice, Form DS-864E. Carried forward. | Comment |
| Fri Nov 27 | Comments close — USCIS information collection, Biographic Information (Registration), 91 FR 61243. | Comment |
| Mon Nov 30 | USCIS EB-5 fee final rule effective, 91 FR 61940, FR Doc. 2026-20016. Also: SCOTUS oral argument, Wassily v. Blanche, No. 25-842 — whether a noncitizen granted asylum that was later terminated may still adjust under 8 U.S.C. § 1159(b). | Fee change / court |
| Tue Dec 1 | Reply brief due by 2:00 p.m. — DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426 (S. Ct.). Carried forward. | Court deadline |
| Mon Dec 7 | Comments close — (a) the Paperwork Reduction Act information-collection portion of the ICE OPT fee NPRM; (b) USCIS Application To Replace Permanent Resident Card (I-90) collection extension, 91 FR 63572. | Comment |
| Wed Dec 9 | SCOTUS oral argument — DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426, on third-country removals. Two days inside the horizon. | Court date |
| Fri Dec 11 | EB-4 Certain Religious Workers (SR) authorization expires unless extended again; H.R. 6500 carried it only this far. Carried forward from the October bulletin. | Visa numbers |
1 · Action Required
Seven itemsPA-2026-15 read in full at last: day-counted deadlines still roll, event-triggered deadlines no longer do, and nothing rolls if you e-file
Last week's edition flagged this as the one unresolved conflict that could cost a case: three published summaries described the alert three different ways, and the difference decided whether an e-filed RFE response landing the Monday after a Sunday deadline was timely. The alert itself now answers it, and the answer is the one that costs money. The operative sentence: “USCIS does not apply the regulatory definition of day to extend the filing period for benefit requests filed electronically.” The stated reason is that an electronic submission is received when it is sent, so there is nothing to extend. VisaVerge was right; the accounts that described only a day-counted versus age-based split were incomplete.
The rest of the alert is narrower than the commentary suggested. USCIS reverts to its pre-2023 reading of 8 CFR 1.2: the next-business-day rule applies only where a deadline is expressed in a number of days by statute, regulation or form instruction. So an RFE or NOID response period rolls, and so do the 30-day and 33-day Form I-290B appeal and motion windows under 8 CFR 103.5(a)(1)(i) and 103.8(b) — which is the deadline that matters most after an EB-1A or NIW denial. What does not roll is any deadline fixed by a substantive eligibility event: a 21st birthday and the CSPA age-out, the one-year asylum filing anniversary, an anniversary-based requirement. PA-2023-10 is rescinded as to those. The alert revises Volume 1, Part B, Chapter 6, Section E in its entirety and relies on Monsalvo Velasquez v. Bondi, 604 U.S. 712, 725 (2025). It applies to paper-based filings received on or after October 23.
USCIS PA-2026-15 (PDF) — read in full·USCIS Policy Manual Updates
Comments close tomorrow on the mandatory e-filing interim final rule — the instrument that makes the PA-2026-15 e-filing trap unavoidable
The rule has been in force since publication; what closes tomorrow is the comment period on a rule already operating. It authorizes USCIS to require electronic filing of any benefit request that has been e-fileable for 180 days or more, following notice on its website and a 60-day grace period, and twenty-two forms already satisfy the 180-day condition.
Read together with PA-2026-15, the two instruments compound: as USCIS mandates e-filing form by form, the next-business-day extension disappears form by form along with it, without any further announcement. A firm that keeps a paper option open for a form with a weekend deadline is preserving a rollover the e-filing mandate will eventually take away.
Form I-129 edition cutover November 9 — now verified from the form page itself, after two weeks carried forward unconfirmed
The page states it twice, once in prose and once in a side-by-side list: USCIS will reject a Form I-129 on the 02/27/26 edition if it is postmarked or electronically submitted on or after November 9, 2026, and will accept it if submitted before that date. From November 9 the 09/09/26 edition is the only one accepted. The 09/09/26 edition was issued in connection with the 9-11 Response and Biometric Entry-Exit Fee for H-1B and L-1 visas, which is why it carries fee-line changes that do not reach O and P classifications.
This has sat in the brief as a carried-forward, summary-sourced item since late September because every direct fetch of a USCIS page returned 403. It is now confirmed against the primary page, and the date is as reported.
ICE proposes $70,000 for a student's first OPT and $30,000 for every one after — comments close November 9
ICE proposes a fee payable by the SEVP-certified school before a designated school official may enter an OPT recommendation in SEVIS: $70,000 for a student's first OPT of any kind, pre- or post-completion, and $30,000 for any subsequent OPT recommendation, including the STEM extension. A pre-completion OPT followed by post-completion OPT and a STEM extension reaches $100,000 or more. The fee attaches to the school's recommendation rather than to an employer; the preamble states schools may pass it to students or employers. Refunds are discretionary, decided case by case by SEVP, and not appealable. CPT is not covered. DHS grounds the fee principally in INA § 214(a) “time and conditions” authority and concedes participation may fall. Any final rule would take effect 60 days after publication and apply to recommendations dated on or after that date.
Nothing is in effect now, and the proposal has an obvious path to an injunction: the $100,000 H-1B entry payment has been enjoined twice this autumn on precisely the notice-and-comment and statutory-authority theories available here. But the timeline matters more than the merits. A student advising decision made in the next six months cannot be made on the assumption that litigation will arrive in time.
FR Doc. 2026-20660 — Optional Practical Training Fees, 91 FR 64566
The 60-day grace period NPRM closes November 10 and it reaches O-1 — but not P-1
The proposal would delete 8 CFR 214.1(l)(2) outright, ending the discretionary grace period that currently gives a nonimmigrant worker up to 60 days after employment ends to file a change of status, an extension or a new petition. The affected classifications named in the rule are E-1, E-2, E-3, H-1B, H-1B1, L-1, O-1 and TN, plus dependents. The stated purpose is to restore a direct relationship between status and the employment supporting it.
For this practice the asymmetry is the point: an O-1A beneficiary whose engagement ends would fall out of status immediately, with no window to file, while a P-1A athlete would not be affected because P-1 is absent from the list. That is a planning distinction worth knowing before a client asks why the same event has different consequences in two files. Carried forward from last week with no change in status; the comment deadline is now four weeks out and is the second firm-comment candidate alongside the OPT rule.
FR Doc. 2026-18631 — Eliminating the Discretionary 60-Day Grace Period, 91 FR 57807
Two new G-1055 fee schedule editions in eight days; the October 16 postmark rule bites the second one
The FY2027 H.R. 1 inflation adjustment was covered in depth last week and is not new. What is new is that USCIS reissued the master fee schedule twice inside eight days — editions 10/01/26 and then 10/07/26 — working the H.R. 1 adjustments and the EB-5 rule through the schedule. The operative sentence in the fee notice is unchanged and unforgiving: any immigration benefit request postmarked on or after October 16, 2026 without the proper filing fee will be rejected.
The adjustment itself still does not reach I-129, I-140, I-907 or the I-485 base fee, so no EB-1A, NIW, O-1A or P-1A fee calculation changes. The risk is in the parallel filings: an I-765, I-821 or I-131 for the same client, priced off a stale checklist, is a rejection rather than a deficiency notice — and a rejected I-765 renewal is a gap in work authorization.
USCIS Form G-1055, Fee Schedule·USCIS Forms Updates — read in full·FR Doc. 2026-20187
Charlotte Asylum Office takes North and South Carolina jurisdiction October 13
From tomorrow, affirmative asylum applicants residing in North Carolina or South Carolina fall under the jurisdiction of the new Charlotte Asylum Office at 128 South Tryon Street, Suite 600, Charlotte, NC 28202, and may be scheduled for interview there. Appointment only; no walk-ins. USCIS directs applicants to read the interview notice carefully for the appearance location. This was the only USCIS newsroom alert published in the coverage window.
2 · Notable
Seven itemsThree new BIA precedent decisions in four days, and B-S-A-N- presumptively closes asylum to nationals of developed democracies
A correction to this brief's own source roster first. The standing research list points at the EOIR Volume 29 page, which has been stale for weeks — Volume 29 ends at A-Q-R-K-, 29 I&N Dec. 865, designated September 1. Volume 30 is live and now runs to page 145 across Interim Decisions #4244 through #4259, and the first sweep this week reported “no new BIA precedent” on the strength of the Volume 29 page alone. Thirteen precedent decisions have posted since this brief last covered the volume at 30 I&N Dec. 44. Three of them were decided inside the coverage window.
Matter of B-S-A-N-, decided October 9 — the significant one, and a sharp break. Two headnotes, quoted: immigration judges “should generally deny asylum applications filed by nationals of highly developed, democratic countries that broadly respect and protect human rights, except in extraordinary circumstances involving national security or foreign policy considerations”; and “European Union citizens are presumptively ineligible for a discretionary grant of asylum in the United States because they are entitled to indefinitely reside lawfully in any EU member state.” The second holding is a categorical discretionary presumption keyed to EU freedom of movement rather than to any individualized assessment.
Matter of M-R-I-, decided October 7 — two holdings, both consequential for anyone with a client holding advance parole. First, a noncitizen who returns to a country of claimed persecution under a grant of advance parole “has abandoned his or her application for asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture, absent compelling reasons for the return.” Second, “[t]he application of a mandatory bar to relief is not triggered by the argument of counsel but is governed by the evidentiary record.”
Matter of M-S-V-, decided October 6 — a bond decision. The respondent failed to show he was not a danger to the community where he worked as a long-haul truck driver without a valid commercial driver's license and was arrested for failing to stop at a port of entry on an interstate; and “[a]n ambiguous social connection and uncertain financial ability to provide support do not fulfill the rigorous standards for a valid, reliable, and credible sponsor that may mitigate an alien's flight risk.” Note a conflict: a firm blog circulating this week describes M-S-V- as a Russian visa overstayer and a reversed $20,000 bond. That does not match the published headnote. Use the headnote.
EOIR — BIA Precedent Decisions, Volume 30·B-S-A-N-, Interim Dec. #4259 (PDF)·M-R-I-, #4258 (PDF)·M-S-V-, #4257 (PDF)
DOL suspends PERM for Microsoft, Adobe and six IT firms — announced at a press conference, documented nowhere
DOL will reportedly stop accepting new PERM applications from, and suspend processing of pending applications filed by, Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL and Capgemini, citing investigations into alleged misuse of employment-based programs amid U.S. layoffs. The announcement came at an October 8 press conference. The cited authority in the firm commentary is 20 CFR 656.31(b) — suspension pending investigation of possible fraud or willful misrepresentation, an initial period of up to 180 days, extendable while an investigation or judicial proceeding is unresolved, with written notice to the employer unless the investigating agency objects in writing.
The verification position matters here. The OFLC news page's most recent posting is September 17, 2026. A Federal Register query against the Employment and Training Administration for everything published on or after October 1 returns zero documents. There is no DOL URL for this. The company list, the scope, and whether already-certified labor certifications or downstream I-140s are touched all come from law-firm alerts reading written notices they have not published, and from a CNBC report of the press conference. Two firms writing on it make the same caution independently: an allegation is not a finding, 20 CFR 656.31(d) provides that absent a fraud finding pending applications must be decided on the merits, and none of the eight has been debarred under 656.31(f).
CNBC, October 8 (summary-sourced)·WR Immigration, October 8 (summary-sourced)·Samper Law, October 8 (summary-sourced)·DOL/OFLC news — read in full; latest item September 17
Suit filed October 5 to enjoin both the adjustment-of-status discretion memo and the deny-without-RFE policy
Plaintiffs are the AAUP, several SEIU affiliates, Americans for Immigrant Justice and individual adjustment applicants. Two policies are challenged. The first is the May 2026 guidance characterizing adjustment inside the United States as a departure from normal procedure and directing officers to treat the election not to consular process as a negative discretionary factor capable of compelling denial absent “unusual or even outstanding” offsetting considerations. The second is the August 5, 2026 policy (PA-2026-05, “Evidence, Requests for Evidence, and Notices of Intent to Deny”) permitting officers in defined circumstances to deny without first issuing an RFE or NOID, applied to applications already pending when it issued. Claims pleaded: contrary to law, in excess of statutory authority, APA notice-and-comment failure, arbitrary and capricious, the Accardi doctrine, and Fifth Amendment due process. Relief sought includes vacatur and preliminary injunction.
Both policies hit this practice squarely and neither is suspended by the filing. PA-2026-05 remains the single most consequential 2026 item for EB-1A and NIW work: it converts a thin initial submission from an RFE into a denial. The discretion memo reaches the I-485 stage of every self-petition.
BAL, October 7 (summary-sourced)·American Immigration Council litigation page·USCIS PA-2026-05 (August 5, 2026)
Practitioner analysis: for founders the O-1A/EB-1A question is sequencing, and the Mukherji argument has to be preserved at the service center
The most useful commentary of the week for this practice, and it is not a press-release restatement. The argument is that for founders the category question has collapsed into a sequencing question, because the loss point in the current environment is not the regulatory criteria but the final merits determination — sustained acclaim, top of the field — which is producing denials in cases where USCIS conceded the criteria were met. That is precisely what the AAO decisions in the section below show.
Two takeaways. First, O-1A as deliberate runway: years in O-1A status build the continuous timeline that answers the “not sustained” objection, and the criteria overlap lets one evidentiary record serve both filings, so a short achievement burst followed by an exit is the profile to avoid. Second, and more immediately operational, a preservation trap: any challenge to the two-step Kazarian framework must be raised at the service center in the initial filing or the RFE response, because the AAO will not entertain an argument first raised on appeal. The piece discusses Mukherji v. Miller (D. Neb., January 2026), which held the two-step process was adopted through internal guidance rather than notice-and-comment rulemaking, and notes that USCIS moved to dismiss its own appeal so no appellate precedent issued, while a later AAO non-precedent decision rejected Mukherji's reasoning.
Matter of Ho revisited: holding an I-485 in abeyance when the visa number disappears after filing
A continuance and abeyance argument for respondents in removal proceedings whose I-485 was properly filed under the Dates for Filing chart but for whom no number is now available. The authorities are Matter of Ho (BIA 1976), holding an application in abeyance rather than denying it where numbers were available at filing and later became unavailable; Matter of Briones (BIA 2007) n.3, that post-filing retrogression does not destroy eligibility; and Masih v. Mukasey (5th Cir. 2008), reversing a continuance denial for failure to apply Ho. The authors distinguish Matter of Pinzon Rozo (BIA 2026), where there was no post-filing retrogression and a nearly four-year wait, and the Board held a continuance for an uncertain lengthy wait was error. They extend the reasoning expressly to EB-2 and EB-3 Dates-for-Filing filers. They also report ICE, coordinating with TSA, detaining people with pending I-485s, including on domestic flights, and charging removability on expired status.
The open question the authors flag is whether an IJ must accept the argument where the Final Action Date is not current at the time of adjudication. Rest-of-World EB-2 retrogressed to a January 1, 2025 final action date in the October bulletin against a March 15, 2026 filing date, so the gap this argument addresses is exactly the gap NIW clients are now sitting in.
Supreme Court opens the term: TPS ruling vacated and remanded, stay of removal denied, immigration certiorari petitions denied across the board
On the first Monday in October the Court granted certiorari, vacated and remanded Mullin, Secretary of Homeland Security v. National TPS Alliance, No. 26-48, to the Ninth Circuit “in light of Mullin v. Doe” — wiping the Ninth Circuit's ruling against the TPS terminations and sending it back to be redone under the intervening decision. The Court denied the application for a stay of removal in Pape-Ansoumana v. Blanche, No. 26A164. Certiorari was denied in a run of immigration petitions: Donskoy v. USCIS, No. 26-5026; Munoz Renova v. Blanche, No. 26-14; Turcios-Berrios v. Blanche, No. 26-30; Acosta-Tapia v. Blanche, No. 26-79; Galindo-Vazquez v. Blanche, No. 26-86; and Givey v. Blanche, No. 26-153. In Zeledon Escobar v. Blanche, No. 26-5183, the petitioner was given until October 26 to pay the docketing fee and file a compliant petition.
Supreme Court Order List, October 5, 2026 (PDF) — read in full
J-1 research scholar programs at nine universities placed under federal investigation
Investigations were announced into the use of J-1 research scholar visas at nine universities, on allegations that foreign researchers were paid less than comparable U.S. workers — framed as visa fraud and wage undercutting. Reporting names Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford and Arizona State among them, but the list varies between outlets and no primary document was found. Related and separately reported: the DOL Inspector General announced a visa fraud strike team and subpoenas to nine universities over J-1 use.
The relevance is pipeline. J-1 research scholar is the common prior or parallel status for exactly the postdoc and academic-researcher population that supplies NIW and EB-1A petitions, and academic compensation levels are now an enforcement theory rather than a background fact.
Envoy Global (summary-sourced)·KJZZ, October 9 (summary-sourced)
3 · Monitoring
Fourteen itemsNovember 2026 Visa Bulletin still not published; EB-2 Rest of World is the number to watch
Confirmed again today against two primary pages: the DOS bulletin index lists October 2026 as current and shows “Coming Soon” for the upcoming bulletin, and the FY2027 section lists only October. Deep links to November and December return 403. Two things to check when it lands: whether Rest-of-World EB-2 moves off the 01JAN25 final action date it retrogressed to, and whether USCIS keeps designating the Dates for Filing chart, which it reassesses monthly. The October bulletin's own language is the warning — the retrogressions were “necessary to keep visa issuances within FY 2027 quarterly and annual limits” and “any necessary adjustments will be made accordingly.” EB-1 remains Current for All Chargeability on both charts, which is the operative fact: the concurrent-filing window for Rest-of-World EB-1A clients is open and should be used rather than held. DOS Visa Bulletin index
PERM analyst review now averaging 336 days — the quantitative argument for the NIW pivot
OFLC figures as of October 5 for PERM and September 30 for prevailing wages: PERM analyst review and audit review are both at December 2025 priority dates; reconsideration appeals to the Certifying Officer at May 2026; and the average analyst-review processing time for August 2026 adjudications is 336 calendar days. The National Prevailing Wage Center is processing June 2026 receipts for both the H-1B and PERM queues, OEWS and non-OEWS alike. Stacked, a PWD plus PERM runs past sixteen months before an I-140 is even filed, against an EB-2 NIW that requires neither. Read alongside the PERM suspensions above, these are the numbers to quote to a client weighing NIW against employer sponsorship. DOL FLAG processing times — read in full
BIA Matter of SETHI: suspension for filing a brief containing AI hallucinations
Decided October 1, 2026 — two business days before the window, and included because of what it is. Matter of SETHI, 30 I&N Dec. 112, Interim Dec. #4254: an attorney suspended for submitting a brief containing artificial intelligence hallucinations and making false statements to the court about his use of artificial intelligence is properly subject to reciprocal discipline, and is suspended from practice before the Board, the immigration courts and DHS. Headnote read in full; the decision itself was not read. This is now a published disciplinary ground, not a cautionary anecdote, and it reaches any filing in this practice that passes through a research tool. Matter of SETHI, Interim Dec. #4254 (PDF)
Ten further BIA precedent decisions posted since this brief last covered Volume 30
Beyond the three in-window decisions and SETHI, the volume has added, in date order by interim decision number: CUBER, 30 I&N Dec. 59 (#4246, reciprocal discipline sanctions); MENDEZ MALDONADO, 30 I&N Dec. 62 (#4247, decided September 22) — an admission of possessing and using cocaine makes a person inadmissible under INA § 212(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) and ineligible for adjustment of status, and the admission need not be preceded by a recitation of the statutory definition, overruling Matter of K- (BIA 1957) and Matter of J- (BIA 1945); K-K-U-J-, 81 (#4249, in absentia reopening); M-K-, 84 (#4250); Y-M-B-, 99 (#4251, bond and asylum fraud); G-R-B-, 102 (#4252, decided September 29) — an IJ may pretermit an asylum and withholding application without a DHS motion, expanding Matter of H-A-A-V-; CORNEJO-AGUILAR, 105 (#4253, discretionary denial of 240A(a) cancellation); MORALES CUXUN, 121 (#4255, danger to the community); and C-M-H-H-, 124 (#4256, decided October 2) — the Board does not retain jurisdiction after remanding to the immigration court, clarifying Matter of Patel. MENDEZ MALDONADO is the one with employment-based reach: it is an adjustment bar triggered by an admission, with two long-standing protective decisions overruled. Headnotes read in full; no decision read in full. Note also a gap in the sequence at Interim Decision #4248, which does not appear on the volume page. EOIR Volume 30 — read in full
$103,265 cap-subject H-1B fee NPRM — comments closed September 24, final rule still awaited
FR Doc. 2026-17324, 91 FR 54817 (August 25, 2026; corrected September 10), CIS No. 2861-26, Docket USCIS-2026-0298. Would charge $103,265 with every cap-subject H-1B petition including the advanced-degree exemption, on top of all other fees, and does not reach extensions, change-of-employer or amended petitions. A separate instrument from the proclamation payment and unaffected by the injunctions against it. Unchanged this week. FR Doc. 2026-17324
$100,000 H-1B entry payment enjoined twice; DHS sent back through rulemaking
Global Nurse Force v. Trump, No. 4:25-cv-08454 (N.D. Cal.) — preliminary injunction granted in part September 30, barring enforcement of the payment requirement under Proclamation 10973 and its extension for new petitions, pending notice-and-comment rulemaking and a Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis; and a separate D. Mass. injunction the same week. Neither order was read; both remain summary-sourced, and the case name and docket for the N.D. Cal. matter are the version reported in last week's edition. The proclamation extension runs the payment requirement through September 21, 2027. This is the template any challenge to the OPT fee rule will follow — which is also the reason not to let a client plan on it. JURIST (summary-sourced)
Rhoney v. Barbosa da Cunha, No. 26-104 — mandatory detention without bond hearings, no argument date
Certiorari granted October 1 from the Second Circuit. The question presented is whether 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates detention pending removal proceedings for people physically present in the United States who were never formally admitted — that is, whether such people are held under INA § 235(b)(2)(A) with no bond hearing or under § 236(a) with bond eligibility. Docket and questions presented read in full. No argument date is set; reporting points to early 2027, so this falls outside the sixty-day horizon. Preserve § 236(a) bond arguments and habeas claims in any detained matter rather than letting the issue go unraised while the case is pending. Questions presented (PDF)
Wassily v. Blanche, No. 25-842 — argument November 30, terminated asylum and adjustment under § 1159(b)
Certiorari granted June 29, 2026; decision below 150 F.4th 100. The question is whether noncitizens who were granted asylum but whose asylum was later terminated may still adjust to permanent residence under 8 U.S.C. § 1159(b). The Fifth Circuit said yes; the Second and Fourth Circuits held them categorically barred. Questions presented read in full; argument date from the Court's calendar. Inside the sixty-day window. Questions presented (PDF)
DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426 — argument December 9, third-country removals proceeding meanwhile
The Court's September 29 order already lets removals to third countries proceed pending decision. Briefing runs through the window: petitioners' brief October 23, respondents' November 16, reply December 1 by 2:00 p.m. Question 2 reaches classwide declaratory relief and APA vacatur under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), which makes it the part with reach beyond removal practice. Argument date read in full from the Court's calendar; the underlying stay order remains summary-sourced and the briefing dates are carried forward from last week.
AAO repository unchanged for a third consecutive week
Verified today: the most-recent list still tops out at August 31, 2026 for B2 extraordinary ability, with a single September 1 entry that is an I-601 waiver (H5212). No September or October B2, B5, D8 or D9 decision has posted. Observed posting cadence — September 11, then September 25 — suggests a late-October batch carrying September decisions, so the next movement is expected rather than overdue. This week's read therefore went sideways into the unread remainder of the August 24–31 cohort; see the AAO section. AAO non-precedent decisions
USCIS Policy Manual: no new policy alert in the window, and one undated technical update unresolved
The updates page, read in full today, shows no alert dated October 5–11; the most recent dated alerts remain those of September 23 (PA-2026-15, effective October 23) and September 18. One undated technical update sits at the top of the list — a revision to Volume 10, Part A on employment authorization policies, altering automatic-EAD-extension language and adding the (c)(40) category to the EAD validity table. It carries no date and no PDF, so whether it landed in the window could not be established. It is the kind of change that would matter to any client on an automatic extension. Policy Manual Updates — read in full
Form I-140G Gold Card edition 09/11/26 posted October 9; filing is online-only at $15,000 per person
The Gold Card program itself was covered in the September 14 edition and is not new. New this week is the form update: edition 09/11/26, posted October 9. The mechanics worth knowing accurately, because clients ask: the fee is $15,000 per person included in the petition, counting the principal and any spouse or children; the form is online-filing only through a USCIS account and cannot be mailed; and it may be filed only after registering at trumpcard.gov and receiving confirmation that the submission was accepted. Worth being able to describe precisely for a high-net-worth client who is a marginal EB-1A candidate, and worth distinguishing from EB-1A on the merits rather than on price. USCIS Form I-140G
Member-gated AILA — no practice alert published in the window
The public news listing was reachable this week and carried, for October 5–11: the Think Immigration founders piece (10/6/26, AILA Doc. No. 26100600, publicly accessible and covered above); a press release, “New Lawsuit Challenges Administration Policies Threatening Green Card Applicants with Family Separation” (10/5/26, AILA Doc. No. 26100507), which on title and date corresponds to the D. Mass. complaint but whose item page would not load; a non-substantive conference blog post (10/7/26, Doc. No. 26100602); and Daily Immigration News Clips for October 5, 6, 7 and 9. No member-gated practice alert, agency liaison minutes or practice advisory was published or surfaced in the window. That is a finding of no activity on the public feed, not a gate this sweep failed to pass — and it is a better result than the three preceding weeks, when the listing itself could not be enumerated. AILA immigration news
Reported ICE enforcement escalation — unconfirmed, and listed as unconfirmed
In-window reporting surfaced only through AILA's headline-only clips and secondary outlets, with no primary source reached: CNN that ICE agents were directed to raise daily arrest numbers; American Community Media that DHS is using FEMA buildings as pop-up immigration courts with public access denied; the New York Times that a federal judge accused ICE of fabricating records in arrest cases; CBS that a judge found the administration violated an order governing ICE holding rooms in Baltimore; ProPublica that more than 500 U.S. citizens have been detained. Separately, a court reportedly enjoined the Remain in Mexico policy on October 9, and the S.D.N.Y. order vacating ICE's courthouse-arrest policy nationwide (September 30) remains in force and remains summary-sourced. cbp.gov was unreachable by every method this week, so there is no CBP coverage in this edition at all. None of this should be relied on without primary confirmation; it is recorded so that it is not mistaken for an absence.
4 · Adjudication Trend · AAO
Non-precedent decisionsNothing new posted for a third week. The repository still ends at August 31, 2026 for B2. This week's read therefore went into the unread remainder of the August 24–31 cohort rather than back into July: four B2 decisions, four B5 and the single August D8, read in full as extracted text. Three of those — In Re: 43193587 (EB-1A, August 31), In Re: 43921854 (NIW signature, August 31) and In Re: 42652636 (O-1 awards, August 25) — were analyzed in the September 28 edition and are not repeated here except where this read added something. Four decisions are new to this brief and carry new holdings: the clarinetist whose appeal was sustained, the composer dismissed on final merits, the microbiologist who won prong one on appeal and lost prong two, and the nurse told she had not shown she is a member of the professions at all. Every merits appeal below was dismissed except the first.
EB-1A · B2 — four decisions read; one appeal sustained, which is rare enough to study
An appeal sustained on a criterion the petitioner did not argue. In In Re: 43889048 (August 31, a clarinetist in a band) the AAO granted (h)(3)(vii), display at artistic exhibitions or showcases, on its own initiative: “evidence of his musical performances at concert venues and award shows” satisfied the criterion and the AAO “withdraw[s] USCIS' determination to the contrary.” Having reached three criteria it declined to address the rest, citing INS v. Bagamasbad, 429 U.S. 24, 25 (1976), and remanded for USCIS to make the final merits determination in the first instance rather than making it itself. It also marked the criterion's outer limit: “the plain language of the criterion includes the modifier ‘artistic’ and explicitly requires that the exhibitions or showcases be artistic in nature.” Two lessons. Performance evidence for a performing artist belongs under (vii) and should be pleaded there rather than squeezed into (viii) or (v). And the remand is the AAO's new litigation-defensive habit showing up as a procedural benefit — it is declining to make step-two rulings, which is worth knowing when you model what an appeal can actually win.
The Mukherji argument now draws a prepared answer. In footnote 1 of In Re: 43193587 the AAO states flatly that “the two-step adjudication process is an interpretive rule that does not violate the Administrative Procedure Act, nor is it a legislative rule,” citing Taneja v. USCIS, 2026 WL 1734266 (E.D.N.Y. June 16, 2026), Nagaiah v. Allen, 784 F. Supp. 3d 798, 810 (E.D. Pa. 2025), Agrawal v. Miller, 2025 WL 2879217 (D. Neb. Sept. 12, 2025) and Etsy, Inc. v. Jaddou, 2023 WL 3689555 (D. Neb. May 25, 2023), and adding that no other federal court “has offered an alternative framework that is similarly grounded in such a thorough analysis.” In In Re: 43193587's companion, AUG272026_03B2203, it went further: Mukherji “is not a binding precedential authority in the present case which arises out of New York,” citing Matter of K-S-, 20 I&N Dec. 715 (BIA 1993), and “[t]herefore, we decline to address the substantive issues in Mukherji until it is properly before us.” Drafting consequence: preserve the objection at the service center, as this week's AILA commentary urges, but do not build an appeal on Mukherji outside the District of Nebraska — it buys a paragraph of adverse authority. Note also the AAO now reserves the final merits determination where initial evidence fails, which removes the step-two ruling an APA plaintiff would want to attack. All case citations here are quoted from the AAO's own text; none of the underlying opinions was read.
Final merits, and the word “debut.” AUG272026_03B2203 (August 27, a young composer) is the decision to read on step two. USCIS had granted three criteria; the AAO affirmed the criteria and dismissed anyway. The reasoning reads as a checklist of drafting errors. Comparison is lawful — “courts have held that comparison to others in the field to demonstrate one's extraordinary ability is proper,” citing Nakos v. USCIS, 2026 WL 2042845 (N.D. Tex. July 15, 2026). Context is mandatory — citing Trajano v. USCIS, 2026 WL 2137917 (D. Mass. July 24, 2026), where the plaintiff “did little to situate those awards and accolades in context.” And then the trap: the beneficiary's professors “use words like ‘debut’ or ‘premiere’ to describe the display of his music composition, indicating that the Beneficiary is at the beginning juncture of his career, not consistent with a sustained acclaim.” Student-period evidence was discounted because the record “largely consists of his activities, accomplishments, and recognition during the period from 2022 to 2025, as a student”; recommenders were discounted as “professors who taught the Beneficiary… or acquaintances or mentors”; and a membership held “since 2025… does not indicate sustained acclaim.”
Criterion detail worth keeping. On awards, (h)(3)(i), three failure modes: receipt not established where the awards did not name the petitioner (Hristov v. Roark, 2011 WL 4711885, at *7 (E.D.N.Y. 2011)); wrong field, where television awards “were not for excellence in the field of regional integration, international relations, or public diplomacy”; and participation certificates, which are not awards — recognition for “participation as a speaker on a panel” does not show issuance for excellence, and “the record lacks sufficient evidence indicating that these certificates are recognized beyond the awarding organizations” (Visinscaia v. Beers, 4 F. Supp. 3d at 136). On published materials, (h)(3)(iii), the AAO withdrew a denial: one properly captioned article about the petitioner in a major trade publication, with title, date and author documented, carried the criterion — completeness, not volume. On original contributions, (h)(3)(v), the AAO tests originality first and a recommender sank it: the letter “states that [the doctrine] was first introduced by her and her colleague.” On leading or critical role, (h)(3)(viii): “the Petitioner has not established that a ‘three-day gathering’ is an organization or establishment,” and screenshots of an organization's own website do not show distinguished reputation (Cuckic v. Jaddou, 2023 WL 2586031 (S.D.N.Y. 2023)).
EB-2 NIW · B5 — four decisions read, all dismissed; prong one, prong two, and now EB-2 eligibility itself
You cannot borrow your employer's national footprint. AUG312026_01B5203 (August 31, Ph.D. mechanical engineer, senior data scientist in healthcare AI) was dismissed on prong one alone, with prongs two and three reserved. Three sentences carry it: “the Petitioner's work in an important industry or sector, even one that is the subject of national priorities, is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish the national importance of the proposed endeavor”; the petitioner “cannot rely on the national reach of [employer's] customer base, potential influence, or innovations”; and “[b]enefits to a specific employer alone, even an employer with a national footprint, are not sufficiently relevant.” Four traps follow. Proprietary work — benefits the petitioner conceded were proprietary “appear[] to flow to [employer] and its customers, rather than to the healthcare data sciences field overall,” which defeated quantified wins of nearly a million additional prescriptions annually and $2 million saved. Team attribution — the documents “reflect that the Petitioner was one individual out of a team,” so prospective impact was not attributable to him. Promises to publish are not evidence — plans to publish white papers and release benchmarks failed for want of explanation of how the non-proprietary methodologies would reach the field. And prong-two material does not count under prong one: letters highlighting skills and past accomplishments “are considerations under Dhanasar's second prong,” and were “largely conclusory,” citing Matter of Mariscal-Hernandez, 28 I&N Dec. 666, 673 (BIA 2022). One framing warning worth repeating: describing employment as “a vehicle” or “one of the implementation pathways” for a broader endeavor invites the Service to analyze the job instead of the endeavor, and the AAO said it was “appropriate for SCOPS to consider the Petitioner's occupation and employment.”
Winning prong one on appeal and losing prong two — a new attack on citation metrics. In Re: 43144720 (August 28, Ph.D. microbiologist, AI and synthetic biology for bio-based industrial chemicals) is the most instructive decision in the cohort. The AAO withdrew the adverse prong-one finding: “The letters identify specific examples of how the Petitioner's research progress has affected the field and she offered probative evidence to corroborate those examples. The Petitioner has explained why the benefits of her proposed endeavor extend beyond her employer or its clients.” Then it dismissed on prong two — which SCOPS had conceded. Note the structural risk before advising on an appeal: appealing can lose you a prong you had already won. The prong-two reasoning is the new material: “she did not indicate whether she factored in any self-citations in determining these percentile rankings or those from her inner circle of researchers with whom she is collaborating.” The AAO then quoted Clarivate's own caveat back at her — “citation rates should not be interpreted as representing the central tendency of the distribution” — and held that “citation frequency which is quantitative in nature does not reveal the reasons for the citations, which involve a qualitative analysis… a high citation number might show that others in the field have noticed the Petitioner's work, but it does not confirm that her work has impacted or advanced the field.” On degrees: she “has not shown that her academic accomplishments by themselves are sufficient,” the AAO noting that Dhanasar himself held two master's degrees and a Ph.D., and that a STEM Ph.D. is “an especially positive factor” but “[a] degree in and of itself… is not a sufficient basis.”
EB-2 threshold eligibility is now being attacked, and nurses are the test case. In Re: 43791282 (August 28, Brazilian nurse, sixteen years' experience, a nurse-led clinical safety auditing model). Beyond the Dhanasar failure, footnote 5 is the headline: “the Petitioner's occupation is not listed in section 101(a)(32) of the Act, nor has she shown that a U.S. baccalaureate degree or its foreign equivalent is the minimum requirement for entry into her occupation. Accordingly, she has not demonstrated that she qualifies as a member of the professions pursuant to section 203(b)(2) of the Act.” The AAO noted she had entered both “Occupation” and “Job Title” as “Nurse” in Parts 5 and 6 of the I-140, and separately faulted USCIS for finding exceptional-ability eligibility “without performing a proper final merits analysis.” Prong one failed in part because “she does not identify any such U.S. institutions with which she has partnered” — Mariscal-Hernandez again.
O-1A · D8 — one August decision, and it is entirely about how to document an award
Only nine O-1 decisions were posted in all of 2026; the most recent remains In Re: 42652636 (August 25, a professional baseball organization petitioning for a general manager), which the September 28 edition covered. This read adds the award analysis in full, because it is the most citable part and it reduces to four discrete grounds under (o)(3)(iii)(B)(1). Volume defeats recognition — the awarding body's own letter said more than three thousand figures had received the award since 2009, and the AAO held the petitioner “did not establish how an award issued to over three thousand individuals since 2009 possesses national or international recognition for excellence,” citing Churyumov v. USCIS, 2019 WL 5802041 (W.D. Wash. 2019), aff'd 2022 WL 1657356 (9th Cir. 2022). A letter from the grantor is not enough — “the Petitioner did not offer any independent, objective evidence showing the national or international recognition for excellence of any of the [ ] awards,” citing Krasniqi v. Dibbins, 558 F. Supp. 3d 168, 184 (D.N.J. 2021), and Sun v. Jaddou, 2025 WL 1556944 (N.D. Tex. 2025) (the award must be one the wider industry takes notice of). Recognition must extend beyond the grantor. And field mismatch — an award “geared towards the ‘artistic industry'” did not relate to the beneficiary's athletic field, citing Oguntominiyi v. Garland, 2026 WL 679247 (S.D. Tex. Mar. 4, 2026). The AAO also restated the O-1 version of step two from the 1994 preamble: “The evidence submitted by the petitioner is not the standard for the classification, but merely the mechanism to establish whether the standard has been met.” 59 Fed. Reg. 41818, 41820 (Aug. 15, 1994).
P-1A · D9 — still dark; three P decisions in all of 2026 and only one of them P-1A
No new P decision, and the category remains effectively unlit. Three P decisions posted in all of 2026. The two most recent, both August 5 (In Re: 43711396 and In Re: 43592564), are P-3 culturally-unique matters — the same petitioner seeking twenty-five Chinese lantern artisans — and both were dismissed on a mootness ground rather than on the merits: “the event in which the Beneficiaries planned to participate… had already occurred,” so the beneficiaries were not shown to be seeking entry “temporarily and solely to perform.” The AAO expressly reserved whether lantern setup, maintenance and dismantling qualifies as developing, interpreting, representing, coaching or teaching an art form under 8 CFR 214.2(p)(6)(i)(A)–(B). The transferable lesson is procedural and applies to P-1A equally: on any P appeal, move to amend the requested validity dates, or the appeal dies of old age regardless of merit.
The only P-1A decision available remains In Re: 41636515 (April 2, an indoor soccer player in the Major Arena Soccer League), analyzed in the two preceding editions and unchanged: dismissed on four independent grounds, the dispositive one being a “Sales and Marketing Contract” whose non-athletic duties defeated the “temporarily and solely” requirement of INA § 214(c)(4)(A)(ii)(I), with a later addendum rejected as a material change under Matter of Izummi, 22 I&N Dec. 169, 175–76 (BIA 1998), an unchallenged ground treated as waived, and a failure of league-reputation proof under 8 CFR 214.2(p)(4)(ii)(A). One point from this read not previously recorded: on the alternative “professional athlete” basis under INA § 204(i)(2), revenue figures scraped from zoominfo.com, konaequity.com and datanyze.com were rejected outright — “[s]ome of the figures were reported as ‘revenue,’ without clarification on whether it was revenue for a year or for another duration… the record lacks corroborative evidence, such as financial reports.” The statutory test is combined revenues exceeding $10,000,000 per year across six or more teams in the association.
Read in full. USCIS PA-2026-15, the policy alert this brief could not reach for three weeks, obtained in full through a text-extraction reader proxy — the e-filing sentence and the day-counted versus event-triggered distinction are quoted from the alert itself. Also through that proxy: the USCIS Forms Updates page, confirming that only two forms updates issued in the window (I-140G on October 9, G-1055 on October 7); the Form I-129 page, confirming the November 9 edition cutover in the agency's own words, which closes a carried-forward unverified item; the USCIS newsroom alerts listing with dates, confirming Charlotte (October 9) as the only in-window alert; the Policy Manual updates page, confirming no in-window policy alert; and the AAO non-precedent most-recent listing, confirming the repository still ends at August 31. The Federal Register API was queried today by document number for five rulemakings (2026-20660, 2026-18631, 2026-16313, 2026-20187, 2026-20016) and by agency and comment-closing date for DHS and for the Employment and Training Administration — every citation, publication date, effective date and comment deadline in the deadline calendar above that carries an FR number was verified that way. The EOIR Volume 30 page was read in full and the first page of seven decision PDFs was read to obtain decision dates. The October 5 Supreme Court Order List, the questions presented in Nos. 26-104 and 25-842, the DOS Visa Bulletin index, DOL/OFLC news, flag.dol.gov/processingtimes, the AILA Think Immigration post and the Cyrus Mehta October 5 post were each read in full. Nine AAO decisions were read as extracted text.
Correction to this brief's own method. The standing source roster points at the EOIR Volume 29 page. Volume 29 closed at A-Q-R-K- and has not moved since early September; Volume 30 is the live volume and now runs to 30 I&N Dec. 145. The first pass of this week's research reported “no new BIA precedent decision” on the strength of the Volume 29 page, which was wrong by three in-window decisions and ten others posted since this brief last covered the volume. The roster should be changed to Volume 30 — or better, to the EOIR precedent-decisions index, so the next volume rollover does not produce the same false negative. Last week's edition recorded the same false negative in its own confirmed-absences paragraph.
Summary-sourced — do not quote as a holding or a rule. The DOL PERM suspension in its entirety, including the list of eight employers, the scope, the 20 CFR 656.31(b) authority and the 180-day period: no primary agency document exists in the public record, the OFLC news page's latest item is September 17, and an ETA Federal Register query for October returns zero documents. The J-1 university investigations, including the number and identity of the institutions. The D. Mass. adjustment-of-status complaint — the case name, court, docket and filing date come from plaintiffs' counsel and from BAL; the complaint was not read. The $100,000 H-1B injunctions in both the Northern District of California and the District of Massachusetts; neither order was read, and the N.D. Cal. case name and docket are carried from last week. The S.D.N.Y. courthouse-arrest vacatur and the reported Remain in Mexico injunction. All ICE and CBP enforcement reporting. The EB-5 per-form fee amounts and the CBP fee effective date. All three in-window BIA decisions are summary-sourced as to reasoning — only the published headnotes and the decision dates were read, not the opinions — and the same is true of SETHI, MENDEZ MALDONADO, G-R-B- and the rest of the Volume 30 batch. Every case the AAO cites in the decisions above (Mukherji, Taneja, Nagaiah, Agrawal, Nakos, Trajano, Churyumov, Krasniqi, Sun, Oguntominiyi, Hristov, Visinscaia, Cuckic) is quoted from the AAO's text; none of those opinions was read.
Unresolved conflicts. Matter of M-S-V-. A firm blog published October 10 describes the decision as reversing a $20,000 bond for a Russian visa overstayer. The published headnote describes a long-haul truck driver without a valid commercial driver's license arrested for failing to stop at a port of entry. The two accounts cannot both be right; the headnote is the primary source and is what this edition reports. The undated Policy Manual technical update to Volume 10, Part A on employment authorization and the (c)(40) EAD category — it carries no date and no PDF, so whether it issued inside the window is unresolved, and it is the kind of change that reaches clients on automatic EAD extensions. EOIR appeal and motion fees and public charge as applied to an employment-based I-485 with no I-864 — both carried unresolved from last week, neither touched this week. The Nov 13 I-140 information collection deadline is carried forward from last week's edition and was not independently re-verified in today's Federal Register query.
Source access failures. uscis.gov returns HTTP 403 to every direct fetch, including its RSS feed — unchanged for a fourth week. The workaround that produced this week's primary-source gains is a text-extraction reader proxy, which returns the live pages and PDFs in full; that is now the route to use, and it is what finally delivered PA-2026-15 and the I-129 cutover. One trap recorded for whoever repeats this: the general-purpose document fetcher does return the AAO decisions page, but serves a stale rendering listing 2021 decisions as the most recent — relying on it would produce a confident, wrong conclusion that the repository has been dormant for five years. cbp.gov is unreachable by every method tried, including the proxy, which surfaced the underlying edge-server denial; there is consequently no CBP coverage at all in this edition — no enforcement statistics, no border data, no entry-restriction action. ice.gov's newsroom renders its release list client-side; the newest extractable item was September 18, so whether ICE issued any press release in the window is unknown. Fragomen produced nothing for a third consecutive week: five URL paths tried, each either an error or months-stale cached content (one returned December 2025 to February 2026 items wholesale). JD Supra served a 2024 page with no item-level dates for a third consecutive week and should be dropped from the roster unless a different path is found. National Law Review loaded a current front page but its second page served August content and individual article pages errored. ImmigrationProf is confirmed current at immprof.com — the Typepad address remains stale and was not used — but every individual post page errored, so those items are listing-verified only. AILA /library/ item pages error while the /immigration-news listing and /blog/ pages load. BAL listing pages carry no item-level dates, so each item must be opened individually. Greenberg Traurig published only event announcements; Fisher Phillips published no immigration item in the window; Jackson Lewis published one, reachable only through its separate blog.
Confirmed absences. No USCIS policy alert in the window. Only one USCIS newsroom alert (Charlotte). Only two forms updates, neither touching I-129, I-140 or I-907. No USCIS Federal Register document in the window other than the I-90 collection extension, and no EOIR Federal Register document at all. No DOL or OFLC rulemaking or news posting — which is the finding that makes the PERM suspension unverifiable. No new AAO decision in any of the four categories for a third week. No November Visa Bulletin. No new entry-restriction proclamation. No circuit-court immigration sweep was run this week, so the absence of any circuit decision here means it was not looked for, not that there is none.
Explicitly not new this week, because each keeps resurfacing as though it were: the FY2027 H.R. 1 fee adjustment (published October 1, covered in depth last week; here only for the October 16 postmark date and the new G-1055 edition); PA-2026-15 itself (announced September 23 — what is new is that it was finally read); the 60-day grace period NPRM (September 11) and the $103,265 H-1B fee NPRM (August 25, comments closed September 24); the mandatory e-filing IFR (August 11 — only its comment deadline is new); the EB-5 fee rule (September 30); the Gold Card program (covered September 14 — only the form edition is new); PA-2026-05 on evidence and RFEs (August 5), which is now in litigation but is not itself new and remains the most consequential 2026 item for this practice; the $100,000 H-1B injunctions (September 30 and October 1); Rhoney (certiorari granted October 1); the October 2026 Visa Bulletin; the AAO invalid-signature dismissals, reported in the August 27 and September 28 editions and recurring in this cohort — the rule is unchanged: a signature image lifted from one document and affixed to another is invalid under 8 CFR 103.2(a)(7)(ii)(A) and cannot be cured, and the AAO compares the I-290B signature against the companion G-28 stroke by stroke; and the Mukherji line, which is new only in that the AAO has now hardened its answer to it.
Compiled Monday, October 12, 2026