For immigrant families across Southern California and the Inland Empire, a new Trump administration directive on green card applications has raised urgent questions about whether people already living in the United States can remain here while seeking permanent residency.
The policy memo, issued shortly before Memorial Day, appeared to mark a major shift in how the federal government handles “adjustment of status,” the process that allows eligible immigrants in the U.S. to apply for lawful permanent residency without leaving the country. The directive suggested that many temporary visa holders and people with humanitarian permission to be in the U.S. would have to return to their home countries and wait there for green card approval, except in “extraordinary” circumstances.
That language alarmed immigrant families, attorneys and employers, because it departed from a practice that has been in place for decades. Days later, however, the administration began to soften its description of the policy. The Department of Homeland Security told The New York Times that the directive was not a blanket rule and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers have long had discretion in deciding such cases.
Immigration attorneys said the mixed messaging has done little to ease concern.
“That is damage control,” said Patrick Kolasinski, an immigration attorney based in Modesto. He said the administration appeared to be responding both to public criticism and to the likelihood of lawsuits, adding that changing the policy in the manner outlined by the memo would be “completely illegal.”
A DHS spokesperson, speaking anonymously to The New York Times, said people who may face greater scrutiny include those who have overstayed visas and applicants from countries whose citizens are considered more likely to rely on public benefits. DHS did not answer CalMatters’ questions about the apparent shift in how the policy was being described.
Legal experts say the directive fits a broader pattern by the Trump administration of tightening rules even for immigrants attempting to follow legal channels. Employers, including many in the technology industry, have criticized the move, warning it could disrupt business operations and push skilled workers out of the country.
The policy is expected to face legal challenges. In the meantime, attorneys say many applicants are unsure whether they should attend scheduled interviews, whether pending applications are at risk, and whether leaving the country could separate them from their families for years.
The people most likely to be affected include relatives of U.S. citizens, laid-off technology workers, international students and mixed-status families. The issue is especially significant in California, where 112,100 people obtained permanent residency through adjustment of status in 2023 — more than in any other state and nearly one-fifth of all such cases nationwide.
Family-based immigration makes up the largest share of green card cases. DHS data show that about 64% of new permanent residents in 2023 received green cards through a family relationship with a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
A central unanswered question is whether the Trump administration intends to apply the new interpretation to people whose applications are already pending. Lynn Damiano Pearson, director of legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center, said immigration lawyers have already seen USCIS officers ask applicants why they are seeking permanent residency from inside the United States and whether anything prevents them from applying through a U.S. consulate abroad.
Those questions, she said, appear to come directly from the new memo and suggest the administration may be preparing to apply the policy to existing applicants.
DHS did not answer CalMatters’ question about whether pending cases would be affected. In a written statement, the department said the policy “will have no significant impact on high-skilled applicants and trained professionals who followed the law.” The spokesperson declined to be identified.
Adjustment of status was created by Congress in 1952 and has been used under Democratic and Republican administrations for more than seven decades. More than 500,000 people use the process each year. The Trump administration memo reframes the process as something that should be granted only in exceptional cases.
Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the memo “wrong,” “reprehensible” and “illegal,” and said he was confident it would end up in court.
Nina Sheridan, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta, said the state is watching closely.
“The Trump administration continues its campaign against legal immigration, putting up barriers and pushing out immigrants who are trying to follow the established process to obtain permanent residency,” Sheridan said. “We are monitoring the administration’s next steps with its latest attempt to ignore existing laws and policies, and we are evaluating our options.”
DHS told CalMatters the memo restates long-standing law and policy that it said were ignored by the Biden administration.
Attorneys say one of the greatest fears among applicants is that the policy could turn routine immigration appointments into removal risks. Many people seeking green cards have remained in the U.S. with government authorization while their cases moved through the system, sometimes waiting years because of backlogs. In some cases, their original visas expired while their adjustment applications were pending.
Lawyers worry the administration could use that against applicants, deny them at interviews and then move quickly to initiate deportation proceedings. Immigration attorneys have also pointed to recent cases in which people were detained during routine immigration appointments and held for months.
Damiano Pearson said it is too early to know how often that could happen under the new policy, but attorneys cannot rule out the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detaining people after interviews.
For many applicants, leaving the U.S. to complete the process at a consulate is not a simple matter. Consular processing can involve long waits, and State Department backlogs can stretch for months or years.
“This is not a matter of buying a plane ticket and waiting a little longer,” said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “For many people, consular processing is not realistic or safe, and for others it could mean months or years of separation from their U.S. citizen spouses, children, employers and communities.”
Visa processing has been suspended entirely in more than 70 countries. Immigrants who have overstayed visas could also face three- or 10-year bars from reentering the United States if they leave and try to apply from abroad.
Damiano Pearson said the memo does not make clear whether those consequences will be considered, adding that the uncertainty has caused fear among people who believed they were on a lawful path to permanent residency.
Kolasinski said some of his clients have green card interviews scheduled and are anxious about what could happen when they appear before immigration officers.
“You go in and you have no idea what type of officer you are going to encounter or what rules they believe they are operating under,” he said.
His advice to clients with upcoming interviews is direct: do not go alone.
“At this point, nobody should do anything immigration-related without a lawyer present,” Kolasinski said.
Original source: CalMatters
