Mandamus Case Law
Updates

26 Months of § 221(g) Administrative Processing Survives TRAC

Judge Mehta dismissed an I-130 consular-delay suit at the pleading stage: 26 months is “within the range of reasonableness” under the Sarlak spectrum, § 1571(b) remains aspirational under Da Costa, and factor four forbids line-jumping. Standing against the National Vetting Center was, however, sustained.

EB-5 Pacing Claims: Jurisdiction Yes, Merits No

Judge Bates held § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii) does not strip jurisdiction over I-526E pacing claims — expressly criticizing Mukkavilli and Aiteliyev — but dismissed on the merits: the RIA’s 120-day figure is a fee-setting goal, not a timetable, and two years does not plausibly allege unreasonable delay.

Karimova Line Hardens: No Duty After a § 221(g) Refusal

Judge Leon dismissed an I-130 administrative-processing suit solely on the no-duty ground, collecting Yaghoubnezhad, Ibrahim, Rezvani, Pour, and Alnaddaf, and finding Karimova persuasive without deciding whether it binds.

H-1B Delay Suit Dismissed — Wrong Defendants, Then No Claim

Claims against DHS fell as moot (petition already approved); claims against the AG, FBI Director, and State leadership fell for lack of traceability; the residue against the consular officers was dismissed for lack of mandamus jurisdiction and failure to state an APA claim.

Eight Months of Administrative Processing Is Not Unreasonable

Judge Howell dismissed an O-1 delay suit under Rule 12(b)(6) on the TRAC factors alone — eight months, however costly to the business, does not state a claim in this District.

EB-5: § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii) Does Not Reach Inaction; Two Years States No Claim

Judge Howell held the jurisdiction-stripping bar applies only to a “decision or action,” and the government itself called the case one of agency inaction; then dismissed an I-526E pacing claim on TRAC. Unspecified family “studying in the U.S.” did not move factors three and five, and a request for a 90-day deadline is still queue-jumping.

Karimova Declined, Duty Found — Dismissed on TRAC at Eighteen Months

Judge AliKhan held Karimova unpublished and unpersuasive, a § 221(g) refusal pending processing not final, consular nonreviewability inapplicable, and a nondiscretionary duty to adjudicate adequately pleaded under § 1202(d) and 22 C.F.R. § 41.121 — then dismissed a J-1 delay claim on the TRAC factors.

H-1B Stamping Delay: Duty Assumed, Eighteen Months Not Unreasonable

Judge Walton assumed a nondiscretionary duty in light of the “raging debate” over Karimova, declined to decide nonreviewability, and dismissed on TRAC: employment and financial harm do not threaten “physical health and wellbeing.”

§ 221(g) Refusal Discharges the Only Duty — No TRAC Analysis Needed

Magistrate Judge Harvey adopted Karimova in full: issue or refuse is the whole duty, a refusal need not be “final,” 22 C.F.R. § 41.121(b)–(d) contemplate post-refusal processing, and neither the APA, § 1202, the FAM, nor § 42.81(e) supplies a further duty. Thirty-one months of administrative processing dismissed without reaching TRAC.

Thirty Months for a B-1/B-2: Reviewable, Not Unreasonable

Chief Judge Boasberg rejected consular nonreviewability per Dib v. Shea, then held thirty months of administrative processing within the two-to-three-year band regardless of whether delay is measured to the complaint or the opinion. Frustrated travel plans are not health and welfare.

Survived 12(b)(6) in October, Lost on Rule 12(c) in August

After denying the Karimova motion in October 2025, Judge Mehta granted judgment on the pleadings on TRAC: § 1571(b), the FAM 30/60-day target and § 42.81(e) supply no timetable, the Wu declaration on SAO processing shows a rule of reason, and 29 months is within range. Mandamus count dismissed because the APA is an adequate remedy.

Mid-Litigation § 212(f) Refusal Under Proclamation 10998 Moots the Delay Claim

While the motion to dismiss was pending, the embassy refused the Iranian spouse under § 212(f). Judge Contreras dismissed the delay claim as moot and denied leave to amend as futile: consular nonreviewability bars review of the refusal, and attacking the Proclamation’s application to one applicant is not a forward-looking policy challenge.

DV-2026 Pauses Unlawful; Delay and Mandamus Counts Fail; Relief Party-Specific

Judge Leon held the USCIS adjustment hold, the State DV pause, and the 75-country public-charge pause unlawful under the APA, but granted the government summary judgment on unreasonable delay and mandamus — refused selectees have nothing left to compel under Karimova, and the rest lose on TRAC. Relief runs only to the named plaintiffs and their derivatives through September 30, 2026.

Karimova Rejected, Twenty-Six Months Dismissed on TRAC; Everyone but One Child Got a Visa During the Suit

Judge AliKhan held that consular nonreviewability reaches only final decisions and that Karimova, twice denied publication, is neither binding nor persuasive; the opinion catalogues roughly a dozen District decisions on each side of the duty question. The one remaining applicant, an Iraqi derivative child, then lost on TRAC: § 1571(b) is aspirational, three to five years is the case-law band, factor four is line-jumping, and generalized home-country hardship does not move factors three and five.

Karimova Followed; No Standing to Sue the Secretary of State

Judge Nichols dismissed a pro se immigrant-visa delay suit in four pages: the § 221(g) refusal is the decision the regulations authorize, nothing further is commanded, and in dicta a refusal plus administrative processing “is itself a decision of exclusion” likely covered by nonreviewability. On its own motion the court held the plaintiff lacked standing against the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney; only the Ambassador and perhaps the Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs could redress the delay.

Duty Found in 8 U.S.C. § 1202(b) and 22 C.F.R. § 42.81(e); Six Months Dismissed on TRAC

Judge Cobb rejected Karimova as non-binding and confined to § 555(b), and held that “all immigrant visa applications shall be reviewed and adjudicated” imposes a duty to reach a final decision, while § 42.81(e) requires reconsideration when the applicant adduces the evidence the post itself requested within a year. The EB-1 family interviewed in Belgrade then lost on TRAC at six months to filing (about twenty-two to the opinion).

Judge Moss Adopts Karimova: No Duty After a § 221(g) Refusal, TRAC Not Reached

An F-1 applicant interviewed in Helsinki, eighteen months in administrative processing, lost on the no-duty ground alone. Section 555(b) imposes no duty to re-adjudicate; the CEAC “another adjudication” language does not distinguish Karimova (Al-Saedi, Hurtado); the Security Advisory Opinion argument “begs the question”; the FAM lacks the force of law; and 22 C.F.R. § 41.121(a), like § 42.81(a), was discharged by the refusal. A footnote preserves Janay’s holding that nonreviewability does not bar delay claims.

Survived 12(b)(6) in February, Lost on Rule 12(c) in October: Twenty-Eight Months Not Unreasonable

After denying the motion to dismiss on a narrow reading of Karimova, Judge Mehta granted judgment on the pleadings on TRAC alone. The plaintiff’s argument that TRAC is atextual is foreclosed by Da Costa; the Wu declaration supplies a rule of reason; twenty-eight months is within the Sarlak range; factor four favors the government even without a formal queue. Factors three and five weighed modestly for the Dartmouth-bound plaintiff (“not a zero-sum game”), but not enough. Final, appealable order.

EB-5: Jurisdiction Over I-526E Delay Found (Following Camarena), Two Years Dismissed on TRAC

Judge Lamberth held that the “may process petitions in a manner and order” clause does not strip jurisdiction under § 1252(a)(2)(B)(ii), found a duty to adjudicate within a reasonable time, and dismissed on TRAC: rule of reason, line-jumping, § 1571(b) “only slightly” for the plaintiff, generic anxiety insufficient. The motion was unopposed; the court reached the merits anyway.

§ 212(f) Refusal After Service Moots the Delay Claim; Exception Denial Unreviewable; Infant Derivative Starts at Zero

Iranian EB-2 NIW applicants in Kuala Lumpur were refused under Proclamation 10998 three weeks after serving their pro se suit. Judge Sooknanan: moot under Mehneh, timing alone does not show manipulation; the refusals and the minority-exception denial are barred by consular nonreviewability; the daughter born in January 2026 cannot borrow her parents’ wait under § 1153(d), and five months (or even twenty-eight) fails TRAC.

Judge Cooper Follows Karimova: F-1 Refused in Vancouver, No Duty After the § 221(g) Refusal

A Stanford doctoral student’s pro se delay suit, filed six months after the refusal, was dismissed on the no-duty ground alone; § 1571(b) is not binding. Footnotes repeat the court’s frustration with the agency’s “double-speak,” flag citations in the complaint that could not be located, and hold in the alternative that about seventeen months is not unreasonable.

H-1B Stamping, Shanghai: Duty and Reviewability Assumed, Twenty-Three Months Not Unreasonable

Judge Walton again declined to treat Karimova as binding and dismissed on TRAC at the pleading stage: about twenty-three months to the opinion is within the District’s “two or three years” trend (Motevali, Sharma), factor four is line-jumping, and emotional and physical hardship from remote work did not outweigh the first and fourth factors. The case had been transferred from the Northern District of California on the government’s motion.

Elimination of the 540-Day Automatic EAD Extension — Mandamus Becomes the Primary Safety Net

DHS's Interim Final Rule removing the automatic up-to-540-day extension for Form I-765 EAD renewals took effect on October 30, 2025. Renewals filed on or after that date no longer receive any automatic extension; if USCIS does not adjudicate before the existing EAD expires, work authorization ends on the face date of the card. Categories affected include the major (c)(8), (c)(9), (c)(10), (a)(12)/(c)(19), and (c)(33) populations.

In the months since the rule took effect, the practical consequence is that I-765 mandamus has shifted from a backstop remedy invoked after the 540-day extension ran out to the primary remedy for renewal applicants approaching card expiration. The TRAC analysis has not changed in form, but factor three (health and welfare) is now satisfied much earlier in the timeline because the income-loss harm is no longer deferred. Practitioners are filing at or before the 60-day pre-expiration window where previously they would have waited eighteen months.

The 39-Country Adjudication Pause — Mandamus Theory After the Freeze

Two USCIS Policy Memoranda froze adjudications across a sweeping list of form types for nationals of 39 designated countries. The freeze applies to affirmative asylum, certain adjustment cases, T and U visa adjudications, and other categories — though the precise contours have shifted with each policy update.

Mandamus litigation arising from the pause divides into two analytically distinct categories. First, direct challenges to the pause policy itself under the APA and constitutional doctrine — these are class actions and individual APA suits seeking to vacate or enjoin the freeze. Second, individual mandamus actions seeking adjudication of paused cases on TRAC grounds, treating the policy pause as evidence of unreasonable delay rather than challenging the policy directly. The second framework has produced mixed early results: some district courts have ordered adjudication; others have deferred to the agency on the basis that the pause is itself an "action" that satisfies the duty to act.

EB-5 Mandamus and the Limits of "Agency Priority" Defenses

The D.C. Circuit addressed an I-526 EB-5 mandamus and rejected the government's invocation of TRAC factor four (effect on competing agency priorities) as a categorical defense to multi-year delays. The court emphasized that USCIS's own published processing-time projections were not consistent with the agency's litigation position about resource constraints and that the agency cannot simultaneously publish processing-time targets and disclaim them in mandamus litigation.

Choice of Law in Immigration Court Follows Venue — And Only the Parties Can Move to Change It

The Board confirmed that the controlling circuit law in removal proceedings is determined by the geographic location of the Immigration Court where venue lies, and reiterated that only a party may initiate a venue change by motion. The decision matters for mandamus practice because it crystallizes the stakes of an Immigration Judge's failure to rule on a properly filed venue-change motion: the procedural delay is also a choice-of-law decision being made by inaction.

Five-Year U-Visa Delay Is Unreasonable Under TRAC

Although decided in the U-visa context, Barrios Garcia has become the standard authority for the proposition that USCIS delays approaching or exceeding two years are presumptively unreasonable absent specific case-by-case justification. The Sixth Circuit's analysis of TRAC factor three (health and welfare) is now routinely cited in mandamus filings for I-485, I-130, and asylum delays.

8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5) Channels Removal-Related Review

The Second Circuit confirmed that collateral APA-based challenges that effectively attack removal-proceeding decisions are foreclosed by §1252(a)(5)'s channeling provision. The case is now standard authority for the doctrinal point that issues arising from removal proceedings must be litigated through the petition-for-review process, not through alternative federal-court vehicles. The same channeling logic constrains attempts at interlocutory federal review of Immigration Court rulings.

Arbitrary Denial of an EOIR Venue-Change Motion Is Reversible Error

The Second Circuit vacated a Buffalo Immigration Court removal order on the ground that the Immigration Judge had arbitrarily denied a motion for change of venue. The decision is direct authority for the proposition that EOIR venue-change rulings are reviewable on the merits at the petition-for-review stage — though only after the case has been litigated to a final order in the disputed venue. The structural cost Ngassaki implies is exactly what an interlocutory mandamus action seeks to avoid.

The BIA Does Not Ordinarily Entertain Interlocutory Appeals

The Board's foundational statement of its restrictive interlocutory-appeal practice. Rahman permits interlocutory review only where the Board "deems it necessary to address important jurisdictional questions regarding the administration of the immigration laws, or to correct recurring problems in the handling of cases by Immigration Judges." In practice, the Board dismisses the vast majority of interlocutory appeals on this basis, leaving federal-court mandamus as the only path for relief from an Immigration Court that has refused to act.

Pre-Decision Agency Delay Is Reviewable — The Duty to Act Is Independent of Merits Discretion

The District of Columbia's foundational district-court decision establishing the framework on which virtually all modern USCIS mandamus rests. Liu held that USCIS's duty to adjudicate a pending application is non-discretionary even where the underlying merits decision lies within agency discretion. The case continues to anchor the duty-to-act / discretion-to-decide distinction that courts use to reject government claims that all pre-adjudication agency conduct is committed to discretion.

The TRAC Factors

The six-factor framework that governs every federal-court unreasonable-delay analysis: (1) rule of reason; (2) congressional timetables; (3) human health and welfare; (4) competing agency priorities; (5) interests prejudiced by delay; (6) no impropriety required. TRAC was decided in the FCC regulatory context but has been universally adopted in immigration mandamus and APA delay practice.