Introduction

The continuance is the most ordinary tool in the immigration court. A respondent’s spouse needs a few more months to finish the visa petition. The applicant’s labor certification is still pending at the Department of Labor. A U visa petition is in the queue at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The lawyer asks for a brief delay, the judge looks at the file, and the case is rescheduled. For decades, this kind of routine pause was the workhorse of removal practice, the procedural equivalent of breathing room. Then, in August 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reached out, took three pending cases from the Board of Immigration Appeals, and used them to rewrite the rules that govern when a continuance may be granted to wait on collateral relief.

The decision is Matter of L-A-B-R-, 27 I&N Dec. 405 (A.G. 2018). Its core teaching is short. A continuance may issue only “for good cause shown,” and “good cause” must mean something. The Attorney General reaffirmed the Board’s longstanding multifactor approach but rearranged the analysis so that two questions sit at the center and everything else moves to the margin. First, will the respondent actually get the collateral relief? Second, if she gets it, will that relief actually change the outcome of removal? When either answer is weak, when success is speculative, or when even success would not help, the continuance fails.

Matter of L-A-B-R- has reshaped how immigration judges think about delay. It has been carried forward in the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s current operating guidance and reinforced by recent Board precedents that have, if anything, narrowed the room for continuances still further. This article looks at what the decision actually held, how it grew out of an earlier line of cases beginning with Matter of Hashmi, where it has gone in the eight years since, and what it now means for the practitioner and for the immigrant who is in proceedings while waiting on relief from another part of the system. The full text of the decision and our prior overview are available on the site. See Matter of L-A-B-R-, et al., 27 I&N Dec. 405 (AG 2018): AG Sets Rules for Continuances to Pursue Collateral Relief.

The Regulation and the Hashmi Trilogy

The starting point is a single sentence in the regulations. Under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.29, “[t]he Immigration Judge may grant a motion for continuance for good cause shown.” A parallel provision at 8 C.F.R. § 1240.6 authorizes “a reasonable adjournment . . . for good cause shown.” The regulations do not define what “good cause” means. For most of the past two decades, that definition came from the Board.

The leading decision is Matter of Hashmi, 24 I&N Dec. 785 (BIA 2009). The respondent was the beneficiary of a pending family-based visa petition. If U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved it, he would have been able to apply for adjustment of status under INA § 245(a). See Adjustment of Status Application i-485 to register Permanent Residence. The immigration judge denied a continuance, citing only his own case-completion goals. The Third Circuit vacated, sending the case back for the Board to articulate a workable framework. Hashmi v. Att’y Gen., 531 F.3d 256, 261 (3d Cir. 2008). The Board’s answer was a list of five factors: the response of the Department of Homeland Security to the motion; whether the underlying visa petition is prima facie approvable; the respondent’s statutory eligibility for adjustment of status; whether the application for adjustment merits a favorable exercise of discretion; and the reason for the continuance and other procedural factors. Hashmi, 24 I&N Dec. at 790. The Board emphasized that “the focus of the inquiry is the apparent ultimate likelihood of success on the adjustment application.” Id.

Two later decisions extended the Hashmi framework. In Matter of Rajah, 25 I&N Dec. 127 (BIA 2009), the Board applied Hashmi to an employment-based case involving a labor certification pending before the Department of Labor. In Matter of Sanchez Sosa, 25 I&N Dec. 807 (BIA 2012), the Board adapted the framework to U visa petitions, which present their own procedural wrinkles because they are adjudicated entirely outside the immigration court and frequently turn on law-enforcement certification.

By the early 2010s, these three decisions, Hashmi, Rajah, and Sanchez Sosa, supplied the working test for any continuance that turned on collateral relief. The framework was multifactor by design, with the strongest factor, the likely outcome of the collateral matter, called out as the central concern but no single factor treated as dispositive. Judges balanced. Practitioners briefed to the factors. The Board occasionally entertained interlocutory appeals when something went badly wrong.

Two parallel developments in the years that followed set the stage for the Attorney General’s intervention. First, the immigration court backlog grew. Inspector General1 and Government Accountability Office2 studies in 2012 and 2017 identified continuances as a significant contributor. Second, the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s Chief Immigration Judge issued operating-policy memoranda, most notably OPPM 17-01 in 2017,3 reminding judges that continuances were not automatic and that case management mattered. See New Guidance on Motions for Continuance and Administrative Efficiency. The atmosphere shifted, but the legal framework remained Hashmi.

What the Attorney General Decided

In March 2018, the Attorney General referred three pending cases to himself under 8 C.F.R. § 1003.1(h)(1)(i) and invited briefing on a single question: when does “good cause” exist for a continuance to allow a collateral matter to be adjudicated? Matter of L-A-B-R-, 27 I&N Dec. 245 (A.G. 2018). Five months later, on August 16, 2018, he answered. The decision keeps the multifactor structure but rebuilds the analysis around two primary considerations and a list of secondary factors.

A. The two primary factors.

When a respondent moves for a continuance to wait on collateral relief, the immigration judge “must consider primarily” two things: the likelihood that the respondent will receive the collateral relief, and whether that relief will materially affect the outcome of the removal proceedings. Matter of L-A-B-R-, 27 I&N Dec. at 405. These are the two questions the Attorney General called the “principal focus” of the good-cause inquiry. Id. at 413.

The first asks how plausible the collateral application really is. A pending Form I-130 from a U.S. citizen spouse where the marriage is well documented and the petition is straightforward looks very different from one the spouse has not actually filed yet, or one that has already been denied for lack of bona fides. The second asks whether the collateral matter, even if granted, would actually keep the respondent in the country or otherwise reshape the case. A visa petition does no good if the respondent is statutorily barred from adjusting under INA § 245(a), 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a), for example because she entered without inspection and has no path to a section 245(i) grandfather position. See adjustment of status; see concurrent filing of Form I-130 and Form I-485. Where either question yields a weak answer, the continuance must be denied.

The Attorney General reinforced both points with examples. He pointed to provisional unlawful presence waivers, which by regulation are unavailable while removal proceedings are pending, see 8 C.F.R. § 212.7(e)(4)(iii), so a continuance to await one cannot establish good cause. He pointed to collateral attacks on criminal convictions, which the Seventh and Tenth Circuits have characterized as “tentative” and “speculative.” See Palma-Martinez v. Lynch, 785 F.3d 1147, 1150 (7th Cir. 2015); Jimenez-Guzman v. Holder, 642 F.3d 1294, 1297 (10th Cir. 2011). And he cited Matter of Quintero, 18 I&N Dec. 348 (BIA 1982), for the proposition that an approved visa petition does not justify a continuance when the priority date is too distant to raise the possibility of adjustment above the speculative level. See Matter of Quintero; see DOS Visa Bulletin and adjustment of status.

B. The secondary factors.

The Attorney General listed several secondary factors that judges should still weigh. None of them is decisive, and none of them can rescue a continuance request that fails on the primary factors. But each can move the needle in close cases.

Respondent’s diligence. The respondent bears the burden of demonstrating good cause. A respondent who waited until the eve of an individual hearing to mention a visa petition, or who has expressed only a vague future intention to apply for some form of relief, has not been diligent. The Board’s prior decision in Matter of Sibrun, 18 I&N Dec. 354 (BIA 1983), which required a “diligent good faith effort to be ready to proceed,” was reaffirmed and extended. See Two BIA Decisions on Standard for Continuance for More Time to Obtain Evidence.

DHS position. The government’s view is relevant but not controlling. DHS opposition is not, by itself, a basis to deny good cause; DHS consent does not establish it. The point matters because some respondents had argued that an unopposed motion was a near-automatic grant. After L-A-B-R-, the inquiry remains substantive regardless of how DHS positions itself.

Administrative efficiency. This is the factor on which the Attorney General most clearly departed from the Board. Hashmi had said that “[c]ompliance with an Immigration Judge’s case completion goals . . . is not a proper factor in deciding a continuance request.” 24 I&N Dec. at 793-94. The Attorney General read that statement as an overreading of the Third Circuit’s earlier opinion. While an immigration judge cannot deny a continuance based solely on case-completion goals divorced from the circumstances of the case, the judge can and should consider the number of continuances already granted, the length of the requested delay, the time the case has been pending, and the impact of further delay on the court’s overall docket.

Length, number, and timing. A short, focused continuance to allow a specific event to occur, for example, a final USCIS adjudication that everyone agrees is imminent, looks very different from an open-ended request to keep the case alive for an indefinite period. A motion filed weeks in advance of a hearing looks better than one filed the day before.

C. Documentary substantiation and reasoned decisions.

A theme that runs through L-A-B-R- is documentation. The respondent must put something in front of the court: copies of submissions to USCIS, supporting affidavits, evidence of the marriage or the qualifying relationship, evidence of law-enforcement cooperation in U visa cases. Naked assertions that a petition will be filed, or that one is pending somewhere, will not satisfy the burden. See Matter of L-A-B-R-, 27 I&N Dec. at 418.

The decision also tells immigration judges to put their reasoning on the record or in writing. The Attorney General observed that an unreasoned order granting a continuance gives the Board nothing to review on interlocutory appeal, and warned that “the absence of any reasoned explanation . . . may, were the Board to entertain an interlocutory appeal, leave the Board no choice but to vacate the order granting the continuance if evidence supporting good cause is not clear from the record.” Id. at 418-19.

The Three Predicate Cases

The three respondents whose cases the Attorney General consolidated illustrate the kinds of situations he had in mind.

L-A-B-R- entered without inspection in 2015. He conceded removability, applied for asylum, then announced he would marry a U.S. citizen and pursue an I-130. At the relevant hearing, he produced only an incomplete petition; the actual filing had not occurred. Because he had not been inspected and admitted or paroled, he was not eligible for adjustment of status from within the United States under INA § 245(a). His path forward, if any, would have required consular processing after departure. The immigration judge nevertheless continued the case for more than a year. The Attorney General faulted that result because the collateral matter, the future, hypothetical visa petition, was unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the proceedings as they stood.

Somphet had been paroled into the United States in 2005, married a U.S. citizen, and applied for adjustment with USCIS. USCIS determined that her original parole documents were invalid, making her inadmissible under INA § 212(a)(6)(C)(i), 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i), and denied a waiver under INA § 212(i) for lack of extreme hardship. In removal proceedings, after several continuances, the immigration judge concluded that she lacked jurisdiction over the adjustment application and yet continued the case again so that Somphet could reapply with USCIS for the same waiver USCIS had already denied. The Attorney General found this kind of recycled, already-rejected pursuit to be exactly the sort of speculative collateral relief that good cause cannot support.

McCalla entered on a visa in 1990 and overstayed. He was placed in proceedings in 2005 after an arrest. His case had been continued more than thirty times, including for marriage to a U.S. citizen, additional arrests and convictions, and collateral attacks on prior convictions. The October 2017 continuance at issue was to allow him to seek a gubernatorial pardon in Pennsylvania for a 2006 conviction. The Attorney General signaled that a continuance for a pardon application of uncertain timing and outcome, on top of more than a decade of prior continuances, was unlikely to satisfy the new standard.

Each case captures a different failure mode: the absent or future filing, the recycled denial, and the indefinite drift. Read together, the L-A-B-R- holding is less a single rule than a set of warning signs. As a counterpoint, the Attorney General cited Merchant v. U.S. Att’y Gen., 461 F.3d 1375 (11th Cir. 2006), favorably as an example of a case in which the respondent’s strong showing on the primary factors compensated for a long procedural history. See Merchant v. U.S. Atty. Gen. (11th Cir. 2006): Vacating Denial of Continuance for Alien Who Met Requirements for 245(i).

L-A-B-R- in the Eight Years Since

Three lines of follow-on developments have made the decision more, not less, important.

A. EOIR’s operating guidance.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review revised its internal continuance guidance after L-A-B-R-. The relevant document is now Policy Memorandum 21-13, issued in January 2021,4 which superseded OPPM 17-01. The memorandum retains the core principle of L-A-B-R- that continuances may issue only on good cause, and instructs immigration judges that collateral-matter continuances are “generally governed by” L-A-B-R-. The memorandum also incorporates the L-A-B-R- guidance on remote priority dates and reaffirms Matter of Quintero.

B. Recent Board precedents.

Two recent Board decisions have extended the L-A-B-R- framework in directions that matter to current practice.

The first is Matter of J-A-F-S-, 29 I&N Dec. 195 (BIA 2025), decided in August 2025. The Board held that “[a]n Immigration Judge generally should not continue an individual hearing based on a respondent’s speculative assertion that he or she may be eligible for a new form of relief from removal not previously raised.” Id. at 195. The respondent, late in a long-pending case, sought a continuance to gather evidence supporting a special-rule cancellation claim for battered spouses under INA § 240A(b)(2)(A) that had not previously been part of the case. The Board treated the late-breaking, undocumented assertion as exactly the kind of speculation that L-A-B-R- forbids. J-A-F-S- also stresses that close-to-hearing continuance requests deserve heightened scrutiny because they waste irreplaceable docket time.

The second is Matter of Pinzon Rozo, 29 I&N Dec. 507 (BIA 2026). The respondent had been approved as the beneficiary of a family-based petition but his priority date was years away. The Board, applying L-A-B-R- and reaffirming Matter of Quintero, held that the indefinite wait, combined with DHS opposition and a lack of diligence, defeated good cause. The decision is an important reminder that approval of the petition is not the end of the analysis; visa availability matters too. See Matter of Quintero; see DOS Visa Bulletin.

A third recent decision, Matter of B-N-K-, 29 I&N Dec. 96 (BIA 2025), although not strictly a continuance case, reinforces the “public interest in expeditious enforcement of the immigration laws” theme that runs through L-A-B-R-. The Board cited it in Pinzon Rozo to emphasize that the government’s interest in bringing proceedings to a prompt close is now an important factor in continuance analyses.

C. The interaction with administrative closure.

L-A-B-R- did not exist in a vacuum. Three months earlier, the same Attorney General had decided Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 271 (A.G. 2018), holding that immigration judges and the Board lacked general authority to administratively close cases. See Matter of Castro-Tum, 27 I&N Dec. 187 (A.G. 2018): A.G. Sessions Reviews Administrative Closure. Although Castro-Tum was later overruled by Matter of Cruz-Valdez, 28 I&N Dec. 326 (A.G. 2021), and the Avetisyan/W-Y-U- framework restored, [see AG Eliminates Precedent Restricting Administrative Closure], the experience of those years matters because it pushed practitioners toward the continuance as the only available pause mechanism at the very moment L-A-B-R- was raising the bar for getting one. Matter of Cahuec Tzalam, 29 I&N Dec. 300 (BIA 2025), has since further limited administrative closure in certain Special Immigrant Juvenile cases. The broader landscape remains one in which pausing a removal case is harder than it once was, by any mechanism.

Where L-A-B-R- Does Not Reach

Two important categories of continuance fall outside the L-A-B-R- framework, and that distinction is sometimes overlooked.

First, L-A-B-R- is specifically about collateral relief. A continuance sought because counsel is ill, because a witness is unavailable, because the respondent has just retained new counsel, or because counsel has a bona fide scheduling conflict, including a religious observance, is governed by the same regulatory good-cause standard but draws on a different line of cases. Matter of Sibrun, 18 I&N Dec. 354 (BIA 1983), and Matter of P-, 4 I&N Dec. 684 (BIA 1952), remain the basic authorities for evidence-gathering and preparation continuances. See Two BIA Decisions on Standard for Continuance for More Time to Obtain Evidence. The Immigration Court Practice Manual at Chapter 5.15(b) recognizes counsel unavailability due to emergency as good cause.5

Second, asylum-related continuances interact with INA § 208(d)(5)(A)(iii), 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(5)(A)(iii), which expresses Congress’s expectation that asylum applications be adjudicated within 180 days “absent exceptional circumstances.” See EOIR Prioritizes Completing Asylum Adjudications in Immigration Courts Within 180 Days. “Good cause” for a continuance is not the same standard as the “exceptional circumstances” required to push past the 180-day expectation. An immigration judge may have good cause to grant a continuance and still need to find exceptional circumstances to justify the delay in adjudicating the asylum claim itself.

These two qualifications matter because they tell the practitioner what kind of motion is being filed and what authorities to lean on. Treating every continuance motion as if it were a L-A-B-R- motion overstates the burden in some cases and understates it in others.

Practical Implications

A. For the issue in general.

L-A-B-R- has changed the rhythm of immigration practice. It is no longer realistic to file a thin motion to continue, attach a USCIS receipt, and assume the case will be pushed out. The motion now needs to look more like a brief: a focused statement of the collateral matter, the documentary backing for it, the statutory and discretionary reasons it is likely to succeed, and an articulation of how it will change the outcome of the removal case. The Board’s willingness to entertain interlocutory appeals from DHS, at one point dormant, now demonstrably active after L-A-B-R- and decisions like J-A-F-S- and Pinzon Rozo, means that a continuance granted on a thin record may not survive review.

For the practitioner, the takeaway is preparation. Documentation in the file. Filings already on the docket at USCIS. A clean statement of statutory eligibility. A clear answer to the “what will be different in six months” question. Where the L-A-B-R- showing is weak, the better course is often to proceed on the merits of whatever defense is available in the immigration court, asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, or another form of relief, rather than to bet the case on a continuance the judge is unlikely to grant.

A few specific points are worth keeping in mind. First, file early. A motion filed weeks in advance, attaching the Form I-130 receipt notice, the marriage certificate, evidence of the bona fides of the relationship, and the Form I-485 if it has been filed, looks materially different from a motion filed two days before the hearing. The Board in J-A-F-S- expressly endorsed heightened scrutiny of last-minute requests.

Second, document the collateral matter in detail. If the petition is a U visa, attach the law enforcement certification or proof that it has been requested. If the petition is employment-based, attach the labor certification status. If the petition has been filed but not yet acted on, attach the receipt notice and any USCIS correspondence.

Third, articulate the path from the collateral matter to relief in the removal proceedings. The immigration judge needs to understand not only that the collateral matter is likely to succeed but that its success will allow either termination, adjustment of status in immigration court, or some other concrete change in the case.

Fourth, address the secondary factors directly. Show diligence. Acknowledge DHS’s position and explain why good cause still exists. Address the length of the continuance and the case’s prior history. If there have been prior continuances, explain why this one is different.

Fifth, ask the immigration judge to put findings on the record. A reasoned grant is far more likely to survive interlocutory appeal than a one-line order, and L-A-B-R- itself contemplates exactly that practice.

B. For the specific immigrant.

For the immigrant in proceedings, the most important lesson of L-A-B-R- is that delay is not by itself a defense. A pending visa petition, a planned wedding, an intent to apply for some form of relief at some point in the future, none of these will keep a removal case open indefinitely. What helps is concrete progress: a petition actually filed, a marriage actually documented, a relationship actually shown to be bona fide, a USCIS adjudication actually within sight.

For someone with a strong collateral case who has acted diligently, L-A-B-R- is workable. A respondent who is the beneficiary of an immediately approvable Form I-130, who is statutorily eligible to adjust, and whose marriage is well documented will typically meet the standard. For someone whose collateral case is uncertain, a remote priority date, a denied prior petition, a conviction that will require collateral attack, the better strategy may be to litigate the immigration case on its own terms, with the collateral matter as a backup rather than the centerpiece.

The bottom line is that the continuance for collateral relief is still available. It has not been read out of existence. But it has been made into something a respondent has to earn, on a record, with evidence, and against a clearly stated burden. Eight years after Matter of L-A-B-R- was decided, that is the regime under which every removal practitioner now works, and every respondent in proceedings now lives.

  1. Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, Report No. I-2013-001, Management of Immigration Cases and Appeals by the Executive Office for Immigration Review 29 (Oct. 2012).
  2. U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-17-438, Immigration Courts: Actions Needed to Reduce Case Backlog and Address Longstanding Management and Operational Challenges app. III, tbls. 12 & 13 (June 2017).
  3. Memorandum from MaryBeth Keller, Chief Immigration Judge, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Operating Policies and Procedures Memorandum 17-01: Continuances (July 31, 2017), supplementing Memorandum from Brian M. O’Leary, Chief Immigration Judge, OPPM 13-01: Continuances and Administrative Closure (Mar. 7, 2013).
  4. Memorandum from James R. McHenry III, Director, Executive Office for Immigration Review, Policy Memorandum 21-13: Continuances (Jan. 8, 2021) (canceling OPPM 17-01).
  5. Executive Office for Immigration Review, Immigration Court Practice Manual ch. 5.15(b) (current ed.).