Introduction

On May 21, 2026, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, bearing the arresting title “Adjustment of Status is a Matter of Discretion and Administrative Grace, and an Extraordinary Relief that Permits Applicants to Dispense with the Ordinary Consular Visa Process.”1 The following day, the agency amplified the memorandum through a public news release announcing that it would grant adjustment of status only in extraordinary circumstances, and an agency spokesman told reporters that a noncitizen present in the United States temporarily and seeking a green card must, as a general matter, return to the home country to apply absent extraordinary circumstances.2

The memorandum amends no provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). It eliminates no eligibility category. It will not appear in the Federal Register, and it does not carry the force of a regulation.3 What it does is reframe the discretionary component of INA § 245(a) so that an applicant who satisfies every technical requirement may nonetheless be denied because the very choice to adjust from within the United States is treated as a disfavored act. The question this article addresses is whether that reframing can survive judicial scrutiny. The early answer, drawn from a cluster of decisions issued in the spring of 2026 against the memorandum’s immediate antecedents, is that the theory underlying PM-602-0199 is already under strain, even though no plaintiff has yet challenged the memorandum by name.

This article situates PM-602-0199 within the chronological sequence of discretionary tightening that produced it, examines what the memorandum actually directs, surveys the precursor litigation that has already yielded preliminary injunctions, and assesses the legal theories likely to govern the inevitable challenge. It closes with practical guidance for practitioners preparing adjustment applications in the new environment.

The Antecedent Sequence: Discretionary Tightening from December 2025 to May 2026

PM-602-0199 did not arrive in a vacuum. It is the most recent and most sweeping entry in a sequence of agency actions, beginning in late 2025, that progressively converted adjudicatory discretion from a case-specific inquiry into a categorical instrument.

A. The Proclamations and the Thirty-Nine-Country Framework

The sequence traces to Presidential Proclamations 10949 and 10998, which together designated thirty-nine countries as high-risk for immigration vetting purposes.4 USCIS operationalized those proclamations through internal policy memoranda rather than through notice-and-comment rulemaking, a choice that supplies the procedural fault line running through all of the litigation that followed.

B. PM-602-0192 and the December 2025 Adjudicative Hold

On December 2, 2025, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192, which placed an adjudicative hold on a broad range of pending benefit requests filed by nationals of the designated countries.5 By its terms, the hold would remain in effect until lifted by the USCIS Director through a subsequent memorandum, supplying no end date and no individualized criteria.6 The hold reached adjustment of status applications, employment authorization applications, asylum applications, and naturalization, among others, sweeping in a very large volume of pending matters.7

C. PM-602-0194 and the January 2026 Expansion

On January 1, 2026, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194, titled “Hold and Review of USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from Additional High-Risk Countries.”8 PM-602-0194 confirmed that the guidance in PM-602-0192 remained in force and clarified that the hold permitted a case to proceed through processing up to, but not including, final adjudication, defined as the issuance of an approval, denial, or dismissal.9 In practical terms, background checks, requests for evidence, and interviews could continue, but no final decision would issue.

D. Policy Alert 2025-26 and the Significant Negative Factor

Alongside the holds, USCIS promulgated Policy Alert 2025-26 (PA-2025-26), which instructed adjudicators to treat an applicant’s nationality from one of the designated countries as a significant negative factor in the discretionary analysis governing adjustment of status and work authorization, even where the applicant otherwise satisfied every eligibility requirement.10 PA-2025-26 is the conceptual hinge between the country-based holds and PM-602-0199. It was the first of the 2026 measures to direct the discretionary stage of adjudication against applicants who were concededly eligible, and, as discussed below, it is the measure a federal court has now enjoined.

PM-602-0199: Reframing Adjustment of Status as Extraordinary Relief

Against that backdrop, PM-602-0199 generalized the discretionary turn from a country-specific cohort to the entire universe of adjustment applicants. The memorandum instructs officers that adjustment of status under INA § 245(a) is a matter of discretion and administrative grace and an extraordinary form of relief that permits an applicant to dispense with the ordinary consular visa process, rather than the routine domestic pathway it has functioned as for decades.11 It directs officers to consult the longstanding body of Board of Immigration Appeals and federal-court authority holding adjustment to be discretionary, and to weigh the totality of the circumstances, such that the absence of adverse factors does not by itself compel a favorable exercise of discretion.12

The memorandum’s doctrinal scaffolding rests on familiar authority. It invokes Patel v. INS for the proposition that a favorable exercise of discretion is an extraordinary act and a matter of grace, and Matter of Blas for the principle that adverse factors must be offset by a showing of unusual or even outstanding equities.13 These citations are not novel; the discretionary character of § 245 adjustment is black-letter law. What is novel is the memorandum’s operative instruction that the applicant’s election to remain in the United States and adjust, rather than depart for consular processing, may itself be weighed as conduct inconsistent with the temporary purpose of the original admission.11

Three features bound the memorandum’s reach and bear emphasis. First, it does not narrow the statutory or regulatory eligibility criteria for adjustment; an applicant eligible on May 20, 2026 remained eligible on May 22.14 Second, it does not direct categorical denial of pending applications; it directs officers to apply the discretionary framework when they adjudicate.15 Third, USCIS published no implementation date for pending cases, and the agency has signaled that category-specific guidance for discrete populations may follow.16 The memorandum is, in this sense, a framework instrument whose targeted progeny are still to come.

The populations most exposed under the memorandum’s logic are single-intent visa holders, such as F-1 students and B-1/B-2 visitors, whose presence while pursuing permanent residence can most readily be characterized as inconsistent with the purpose of admission.17 Dual-intent holders, such as H-1B and L-1 nonimmigrants, occupy a more defensible position, though the memorandum exempts no category from the discretionary analysis.18 Notably, even immediate relatives of United States citizens, whom Congress expressly exempted from several of the § 245(c) bars, are not exempted from the discretionary inquiry the memorandum prescribes, a tension explored below.19

The Litigation Landscape: The Precursor Challenges

Although no plaintiff has yet challenged PM-602-0199 itself, the spring of 2026 produced a cluster of decisions against its immediate antecedents. These cases share a common architecture: each challenges the country-based holds and, in the lead case, the significant negative factor policy, on Administrative Procedure Act (APA) grounds, and each has produced relief, albeit relief confined to named plaintiffs.

A. The Northern District of California: The Physician Plaintiffs

The earliest of the decisions arose in the Northern District of California, where two physician plaintiffs, graduates of Tehran University of Medical Sciences subject to the hold under PM-602-0192, sought a preliminary injunction.20 The court’s February 20, 2026 order addressed the government’s consistent position that final adjudication of the plaintiffs’ Form I-485 and Form I-765 applications was suspended pursuant to the hold, and framed the question whether the agency could indefinitely decline to adjudicate applications it was otherwise obligated to decide.21

B. Saghafi v. Edlow

On April 24, 2026, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland partially granted a preliminary injunction in Saghafi v. Edlow, enjoining USCIS from pausing the adjudication of the Form I-485 applications of the eighty-three plaintiffs before it.22 The court reasoned that the challenged policies were arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law, and that the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm absent relief.6

C. Doe v. Trump: The Lead Case and Its Expansion

The most consequential decision issued from the District of Massachusetts. In Doe v. Trump, Judge Julia E. Kobick consolidated the earlier-filed Akmurat O. Doe action with Abeer H. Doe et al. v. Trump.23 In a Memorandum and Order dated April 30, 2026, the court found that two USCIS policies were likely unlawful: the indefinite adjudicative hold on benefit applications from nationals of the thirty-nine designated countries and from asylum seekers, embodied in PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0194; and the policy, announced in PA-2025-26, treating nationality from a designated country as a significant negative factor in discretionary decisions.24

On the merits, the court concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their APA claims. It rejected the government’s rationale for a categorical, indefinite hold keyed to country of origin, holding that USCIS lacks authority to decline perpetually to adjudicate applications that Congress and the agency’s own regulations require it to decide, and it found that the plaintiffs faced irreparable harm from indefinite limbo in their green card, asylum, naturalization, and work authorization matters.25 The April 30 order initially lifted the hold for twenty-two plaintiffs who had submitted declarations describing concrete and immediate harm, including lost employment offers and missed family events, and barred application of the nationality-based negative factor to their adjustment and work authorization applications.26

The court then expanded that relief. By order dated May 7, 2026, Judge Kobick extended the injunction to 266 named plaintiffs, comprising 167 plaintiffs in the Doe I action and 99 in Doe II, and enjoined enforcement of PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and the PA-2025-26 significant negative factor policy against them.27 The relief, however, remains plaintiff-specific. Applicants from the designated countries who are not named plaintiffs in Doe v. Trump or a comparable action remain subject to the hold, even as the litigation momentum has turned against the policy.28

The Migrating Theory: Why the Hold Litigation Matters for PM-602-0199

The significance of the precursor litigation for PM-602-0199 lies not in its facts, which concern country-based holds rather than the universal discretion memorandum, but in the legal theory the Doe court endorsed. By enjoining the PA-2025-26 significant negative factor policy, the court accepted, at the preliminary-injunction stage, that USCIS may not deploy a categorical rule to disfavor, at the discretionary stage, applicants whom Congress and the agency’s regulations require it to adjudicate.29 That holding maps directly onto the central vulnerability of PM-602-0199, which recasts the applicant’s election of a statutory domestic pathway as an adverse discretionary factor.

Three theories are likely to anchor the eventual challenge, and each finds support in the precursor litigation. The first is procedural. PM-602-0199 was issued as a policy memorandum without notice-and-comment rulemaking; challengers are expected to argue that, notwithstanding its label, the memorandum operates as a substantive rule effecting a binding change in the regime governing adjustment applicants, and was therefore subject to the requirements of 5 U.S.C. § 553.30 The Doe court’s willingness to subject the antecedent memoranda to APA scrutiny supplies a template.

The second is the ultra vires and congressional-intent theory. Section 245 was enacted, and repeatedly expanded since the 1950s, precisely to furnish an alternative to consular processing, sparing eligible noncitizens the disruption of departure and allowing families to remain intact and employers to retain workers during visa backlogs.31 An agency may not use an internal memorandum to nullify or invert the design Congress enacted, and treating resort to a congressionally created pathway as a disfavored act arguably does precisely that.32

The third, and most pointed, is the discretionary-stage argument. The strongest version of the challenge contends that USCIS is scrutinizing at the discretionary stage the very conduct that Congress declined to bar at the eligibility stage. The point has particular force for immediate relatives of United States citizens, whom Congress expressly exempted from several § 245(c) bars; the memorandum’s central premise, that remaining to adjust rather than departing for consular processing is an adverse factor, describes exactly the applicant Congress chose to protect.33 For this group, the principal exposure may shift from the statutory stage, where they are insulated, to the discretionary stage, where the memorandum operates.

The Counterweight: Section 242(a)(2)(B) and the Reviewability Problem

The challenge is far from a foregone conclusion, and any candid assessment must reckon with the government’s defenses, which are substantial. The government will invoke the explicit discretionary language of § 245(a), which provides that the status of an eligible applicant may be adjusted in the discretion of the agency, and the deep body of authority, including Patel, confirming that adjustment is a matter of grace rather than entitlement.34 It will point to the memorandum’s own instruction that discretion be exercised case-by-case on the totality of the circumstances, characterizing the memorandum as guidance rather than a binding substantive rule, and thus outside the notice-and-comment requirement.35

Most formidably, the government will rely on the limits Congress placed on judicial review of discretionary determinations. INA § 242(a)(2)(B) strips the courts of jurisdiction to review most discretionary judgments respecting adjustment of status, and the Supreme Court confirmed the breadth of that bar in Patel v. Garland.36 The unreviewability problem is real, and it is the single greatest obstacle to a facial challenge: a plaintiff denied adjustment in the exercise of discretion may find the courthouse doors closed regardless of how the discretion was structured. The counterargument, that an APA challenge to the framework memorandum is distinct from review of an individual discretionary denial, is plausible but untested as applied to PM-602-0199.

There is, however, a meaningful counterweight in the plaintiffs’ favor. The parallel litigation over the related country-specific discretion policies has already produced preliminary relief, an early signal that at least some of the 2026 discretion measures are vulnerable notwithstanding the reviewability bar.37 The existence of active and partly successful litigation confirms that these policies are contestable rather than immovable.

Current Posture and What Comes Next

As of the date of this writing, no lawsuit has been filed challenging PM-602-0199 by name.38 Commentary across the immigration bar uniformly describes a facial challenge as imminent rather than docketed, and at least one firm has publicly announced that it is assembling plaintiffs for a putative class action contesting the memorandum in federal court.39 The anticipated grounds track the theories canvassed above: statutory authority, congressional intent, the APA’s procedural requirements, and the retroactive application of the framework to pending adjustment cases.40

Practitioners should expect, consistent with the memorandum’s own signal, that category-specific follow-on guidance directed at discrete populations may precede or accompany the first filed challenge, and that any such guidance will itself become a litigation target.41

Practical Guidance: Building the Discretionary Record

Until a court rules otherwise, PM-602-0199 is operative, and applications are being adjudicated under it.42 The practical lesson is that the adjustment application can no longer be approached as a documentary checklist; it must be built as a case to be proven on the equities. Several measures follow.

First, build the discretionary record into the initial filing rather than awaiting a request for evidence or a notice of intent to deny. Affirmative equities, including family ties to United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, maintenance of lawful status, tax compliance, employment history, community ties, and the hardship of departure, should be documented at the outset.43

Second, address adverse factors directly, with evidence and explanation, rather than leaving an officer to resolve ambiguity unfavorably.44

Third, counsel clients candidly on the heightened risk borne by single-intent visa holders and on the comparatively stronger, though not invulnerable, posture of dual-intent applicants, and evaluate, where appropriate, whether consular processing or a waiver such as the Form I-601A provisional unlawful presence waiver presents a more secure path.45

Fourth, for clients who are nationals of the thirty-nine designated countries, assess whether the protections of the pending litigation, or an individual action, may be warranted, recognizing that current injunctive relief reaches only named plaintiffs.46

Conclusion

PM-602-0199 represents a significant reorientation of adjustment of status adjudication, not by changing the law, but by changing the burden, transforming eligibility from the end of the inquiry into its beginning. The memorandum’s legal foundation is contested, and the theory most likely to constrain it, that an agency may not direct discretion against applicants Congress required it to adjudicate, has already drawn preliminary injunctive relief in the litigation over the memorandum’s antecedents. Whether that theory can overcome the formidable reviewability bar of § 242(a)(2)(B) remains to be seen, and will likely be answered in the federal courts within months. Until then, the prudent course is neither panic nor complacency, but the disciplined construction of an equities-forward record in every adjustment matter.

  1. U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199: Adjustment of Status is a Matter of Discretion and Administrative Grace, and an Extraordinary Relief that Permits Applicants to Dispense with the Ordinary Consular Visa Process (May 21, 2026).
  2. U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., News Release (May 22, 2026); see also reported remarks of USCIS Spokesman Zach Kahler (May 22, 2026).
  3. PM-602-0199, supra note 1, at 1.
  4. Proclamation No. 10949; Proclamation No. 10998. The two proclamations together designated thirty-nine countries as high-risk for vetting purposes.
  5. U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192 (Dec. 2, 2025).
  6. Id.
  7. See id. The hold reached, among other filings, Form I-485 (adjustment of status), Form I-765 (employment authorization), asylum applications, and naturalization applications.
  8. U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194: Hold and Review of USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens from Additional High-Risk Countries (Jan. 1, 2026).
  9. Id. (clarifying that the hold permits a case to proceed through processing up to, but not including, final adjudication, defined as the issuance of an approval, denial, or dismissal).
  10. U.S. Citizenship & Immigr. Servs., Policy Alert PA-2025-26.
  11. PM-602-0199, supra note 1.
  12. Id. (instructing officers to consider all relevant factors in the totality of the circumstances, and noting that the absence of adverse factors does not by itself demonstrate entitlement to a favorable exercise of discretion).
  13. Id. (citing Patel v. INS, 738 F.2d 239, 242 (7th Cir. 1984), and Matter of Blas, 15 I. & N. Dec. 626, 641 (BIA 1974; A.G. 1976); see also Mamoka v. INS, 43 F.3d 184, 188 (5th Cir. 1995) (per curiam); Wing Ding Chan v. INS, 631 F.2d 978, 980 (D.C. Cir. 1980). On the equities framework, see Matter of Arai, 13 I&N Dec. 494 (BIA 1970): Weighing Adverse Factors and Equities in AOS Adjudication, MyAttorneyUSA.
  14. Id. The memorandum does not narrow the statutory or regulatory eligibility criteria for adjustment. See generally Adjustment of Immigration Status, MyAttorneyUSA.
  15. Id. The memorandum does not direct categorical denial of pending applications; it directs officers to apply the discretionary framework upon adjudication.
  16. Id. USCIS published no implementation date for pending cases and signaled that category-specific guidance addressing discrete populations may follow.
  17. The memorandum’s logic applies most directly to single-intent visa holders, such as F-1 students and B-1/B-2 visitors, whose continued presence while pursuing permanent residence is most readily characterized as inconsistent with the temporary purpose of admission.
  18. Dual-intent nonimmigrants, including H-1B and L-1 holders, are comparatively better positioned, although the memorandum exempts no category from the discretionary analysis.
  19. See INA § 245(c), 8 U.S.C. § 1255(c); Exemptions from Adjustment of Status Bars for Certain Employment-Based Applications, MyAttorneyUSA.
  20. No. 5:25-cv-10602-SVK (N.D. Cal.). The plaintiffs, graduates of Tehran University of Medical Sciences and physicians subject to the hold under PM-602-0192, sought a preliminary injunction.
  21. Id. (order of Feb. 20, 2026).
  22. Saghafi v. Edlow (D. Md. Apr. 24, 2026) (partial preliminary injunction enjoining USCIS from pausing adjudication of the Form I-485 applications of the eighty-three plaintiffs).
  23. Abeer H. Doe v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-11382 (D. Mass.) (consolidated with the earlier-filed Akmurat O. Doe v. Trump).
  24. Doe v. Trump, Mem. & Order (D. Mass. Apr. 30, 2026) (Kobick, J.).
  25. Id. (finding likely success on the merits under the Administrative Procedure Act, rejecting the government’s rationale for a categorical and indefinite hold keyed to country of origin, and finding irreparable harm).
  26. Id. The April 30 order initially lifted the hold for twenty-two plaintiffs who submitted declarations describing concrete and immediate harm, including lost employment offers and missed family events.
  27. Doe v. Trump, Order (D. Mass. May 7, 2026) (extending injunctive relief to 266 named plaintiffs, comprising 167 in Doe I and 99 in Doe II, and enjoining enforcement of PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and the PA-2025-26 significant negative factor policy against them).
  28. Id. Relief is plaintiff-specific; applicants from the designated countries who are not named plaintiffs in Doe v. Trump or a comparable action remain subject to the hold.
  29. See Doe v. Trump, Mem. & Order (Apr. 30, 2026); Doe v. Trump, Order (May 7, 2026).
  30. See 5 U.S.C. § 553. Challengers are expected to argue that PM-602-0199 operates as a substantive rule effecting a binding change in the regime governing adjustment applicants and was therefore subject to notice-and-comment requirements.
  31. See INA § 245, 8 U.S.C. § 1255. Adjustment of status was enacted, and repeatedly expanded since the 1950s, to furnish a domestic alternative to consular processing. See Limitations on Adjustment of Status in the Visa Waiver Program, MyAttorneyUSA (reproducing the text of INA § 245(a).
  32. An agency may not use an internal memorandum to nullify or invert the statutory design Congress enacted.
  33. See INA § 245(c), 8 U.S.C. § 1255(c) (exempting immediate relatives from several adjustment bars).
  34. INA § 245(a), 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a); Patel v. INS, 738 F.2d 239, 242 (7th Cir. 1984).
  35. PM-602-0199, supra note 1 (directing case-by-case exercise of discretion on the totality of the circumstances).
  36. INA § 242(a)(2)(B), 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(B); see Patel v. Garland, 596 U.S. 328, 338-40 (2022).
  37. See Doe v. Trump, supra notes 25 to 30; Saghafi v. Edlow, supra note 23.
  38. As of June 2, 2026.
  39. Commentary across the immigration bar uniformly describes a facial challenge as imminent; at least one firm has publicly announced that it is assembling plaintiffs for a putative class action.
  40. The anticipated grounds include statutory authority, congressional intent, the procedural requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act, and retroactive application to pending I-485 cases.
  41. PM-602-0199, supra note 1. See also Determining Whether an Adjustment Applicant Received Conditional or Humanitarian Parole, MyAttorneyUSA (noting early reaction to PM-602-0199).
  42. The memorandum remains operative until a court rules otherwise.
  43. Affirmative equities should be documented at the outset, including family ties to United States citizens and lawful permanent residents, maintenance of lawful status, tax compliance, employment history, community ties, and the hardship of departure. See Matter of Arai, 13 I&N Dec. 494 (BIA 1970): Weighing Adverse Factors and Equities in AOS Adjudication, MyAttorneyUSA.
  44. Adverse factors should be addressed with evidence and explanation rather than left to unfavorable resolution by the adjudicating officer.
  45. Counsel should evaluate whether consular processing or a waiver such as the Form I-601A provisional unlawful presence waiver presents a more secure path. See Provisional Unlawful Presence Waivers (Rules), MyAttorneyUSA.
  46. Current injunctive relief reaches only named plaintiffs; counsel should assess whether an individual action is warranted for nationals of the designated countries.