USCIS Mandamus by Federal District

Where you file a USCIS mandamus petition matters almost as much as how you draft it. The same delayed I-485, I-130, N-400, or EB-5 petition can be resolved by voluntary agency adjudication within sixty days in one federal district and dismissed on a TRAC-factors motion to dismiss in another. This page is my attempt to lay out, with appropriate methodological humility, what the publicly available record tells us about USCIS mandamus practice in six of the most consequential federal districts — the Southern District of Texas (SDTX), the Southern District of New York (SDNY), the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), the District of New Jersey (DNJ), the District of Connecticut (D. Conn.), the District of Columbia (DDC), and the Eastern District of Michigan (EDMI).

I. Why district choice matters

USCIS mandamus venue is, in most cases, broader than practitioners assume. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e), a civil action against a federal officer or agency may be brought in any district where (a) a defendant in the action resides, (b) a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred, or (c) the plaintiff resides if no real property is involved. In practice, this means a delayed application can usually be litigated in the district where the petitioner lives, in the district where the adjudicating USCIS service center sits, or in the District of Columbia (because USCIS headquarters and senior officers reside there).

That structural flexibility is why the seven districts addressed on this page attract such an outsized share of the national mandamus docket. DDC is the default venue for cases involving the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program Office and for consular-processing matters. EDNY draws from one of the largest immigrant populations in the country. SDTX captures cases tied to the Texas service centers and to the southwest border. The other three — SDNY, D. Conn., and EDMI — see meaningful caseloads either because of regional demographics or because circuit-level precedent makes them strategically attractive forums.

Each district has developed its own posture toward mandamus relief. The D.C. Circuit's decision in Da Costa v. Immigrant Investor Program Office, 80 F.4th 330 (D.C. Cir. 2023), reshaped DDC EB-5 practice. The Fifth Circuit's decision in Cheejati v. Blinken, 97 F.4th 988 (5th Cir. 2024), did the same for SDTX. The Sixth Circuit's holding in Barrios Garcia v. DHS, 25 F.4th 430 (6th Cir. 2022), points the other direction and makes EDMI a uniquely plaintiff-friendly forum for U-visa delay claims. Understanding these differences is essential before filing.

II. The most important distinction: voluntary dismissal is not settlement

Before going any further, a definitional point that almost every practitioner blog gets wrong and that every prospective client should understand.

When colleagues say a mandamus case "settled," what they almost always mean is that the U.S. Attorney's Office called to report that USCIS had just adjudicated the underlying application, and the parties then filed a notice of voluntary dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(A). This is not a settlement in the formal procedural sense. There is no stipulated agreement, no consent decree, no court-approved compromise of any kind. The case is dismissed because the relief sought — adjudication of the application — has become moot.

Why does this distinction matter?

• A Rule 41(a) voluntary dismissal preserves the plaintiff's ability to refile if USCIS revisits the adjudication or rescinds an approval, because the dismissal is without prejudice unless the parties agree otherwise. A formal settlement typically waives that right.
• A formal settlement creates contractual rights enforceable in the same court. A voluntary dismissal creates none. If USCIS reopens the case after dismissal, the petitioner must start fresh.
• Statistical claims framed as "settlement rates" are misleading when the underlying disposition is voluntary dismissal after agency action. The petitioner got the relief sought, but no compromise was negotiated.

Throughout this page I use "voluntary dismissal after agency action" for the most common category of resolution, and reserve "formal settlement or stipulation" for the rare cases that resolve through a court-approved compromise. The two categories combined form the universe of cases in which the plaintiff effectively prevailed without a judicial decision on the merits — what one might loosely call the "successful resolution" category, though even that phrasing requires care.

III. The seven districts at a glance

The relative concentration of USCIS mandamus filings across the six districts in 2024–2025 — measured as a share of the seven-district subset, not of the national docket — looks approximately like this:

DDC and EDNY together represent roughly half of the seven-district subset. SDTX is the third largest. SDNY, DNJ, EDMI, and D. Conn. carry meaningful but smaller caseloads — though DNJ's Newark-anchored docket is closer to SDNY in volume than its profile in the immigration bar would suggest. The drivers of these differences are partly demographic, partly geographic (where the relevant USCIS office sits), and partly strategic (which circuit's precedent the practitioner prefers).

IV. National context: the mandamus surge has leveled off

National USCIS-directed mandamus filings rose from roughly 2,719 in fiscal year 2021 to 6,864 by fiscal year 2023, an increase of more than 150% in two years. The growth was driven by the post-pandemic adjudication backlog that hit USCIS hardest in 2021–2022, the FBI name-check delays that recurred at the end of that period, and the EAD automatic-extension expiration timeline that pushed I-765 cases into court. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported 12,183 total civil immigration filings in the twelve months ending March 31, 2024, a 10% year-over-year increase.

By FY2024 and into FY2025, the upward trajectory has flattened. TRAC's monthly tracking through early 2026 puts the USCIS-mandamus run-rate at roughly 7,500 to 9,000 filings per year nationally. The headline national immigration-litigation surge of 2025–2026 is driven almost entirely by habeas petitions, not mandamus. The mandamus baseline is permanently elevated relative to the pre-2020 norm, but no longer growing exponentially.

V. Form-type distribution by district

The mix of USCIS forms underlying each district's mandamus docket differs sharply, and the differences track structural features of the agency. DDC's EB-5 concentration is the most pronounced outlier. EDNY, SDTX, SDNY, EDMI, and D. Conn. are dominated by I-485 adjustment-of-status claims, with varying weights of I-130, N-400, and I-589 cases.

Some patterns worth highlighting:

• EB-5 (I-526 and I-829) is concentrated in DDC almost exclusively because the Immigrant Investor Program Office sits in Washington. Practitioners outside the District of Columbia rarely file EB-5 mandamus in their local district because Da Costa binds those courts that would follow D.C. Circuit reasoning anyway.
• I-485 adjustment of status dominates everywhere outside DDC. The visa-bulletin retrogression that hit India-born and China-born EB-2 and EB-3 beneficiaries especially hard in the past three years means I-485 mandamus is the most common claim in EDNY, SDTX, SDNY, EDMI, and D. Conn.
• N-400 naturalization matters are technically not mandamus actions — they are filed under 8 U.S.C. § 1447(b), which gives federal district courts the authority to adjudicate a naturalization application directly once USCIS has failed to act within 120 days of the examination. They are coded under Nature of Suit 462 rather than 465. In practice, they travel through the same calendars as mandamus filings and are reflected in the chart above. N-400 actions are largest as a share of docket in EDMI (Detroit-area backlogs) and D. Conn.
• I-589 asylum delay cases are concentrated in SDTX because of the border courts' proximity to the Houston, Harlingen, and Newark Asylum Offices. Law360 reported in late 2025 that USCIS's asylum-pause policy is likely to drive a new wave of mandamus filings in 2026.
• I-918 U-visa cases are disproportionately concentrated in EDMI because Barrios Garcia v. DHS (6th Cir. 2022) is the most plaintiff-friendly U-visa delay opinion at the circuit level. Petitioners with venue flexibility frequently choose EDMI for this reason.

VI. The disposition question: how cases actually end

We can disaggregate the universe of resolved USCIS mandamus cases into four categories. The first two functionally mean "the plaintiff got the relief sought" and the second two functionally mean "the case went to a judge." The proportions across the four buckets vary materially by district.

VII. The headline comparison: litigated versus settled

When the two "plaintiff prevailed without judicial intervention" categories are combined (voluntary dismissal plus formal settlement) and compared with the two "the case went to a judge" categories (MTD dismissal plus merits judgment), the comparative picture becomes clearer. SDTX and DDC are the two districts in which roughly one in four resolved cases is litigated to a judicial disposition. SDNY, EDNY, DNJ, D. Conn., and EDMI all show a roughly one-in-eight ratio.

The reasons SDTX and DDC stand out are well documented. The Fifth Circuit's decision in Cheejati emboldens DOJ in the Southern District of Texas to file motions to dismiss on jurisdiction-stripping grounds rather than negotiate with plaintiffs' counsel. The D.C. Circuit's decision in Da Costa has the same effect in DDC, particularly for EB-5 cases, and the broader DDC bench's willingness to apply the TRAC factors at the Rule 12 stage extends that effect beyond EB-5. In the other four districts, the U.S. Attorney's Office and USCIS more often take the path of agency adjudication, which moots the case before a court rules.

VIII. Strategic considerations

1. Forum choice maps onto litigation risk.

When venue rules permit a choice, filing in SDTX or DDC carries approximately twice the risk of an adverse Rule 12 dismissal compared with SDNY, EDNY, DNJ, D. Conn., or EDMI. That does not mean SDTX or DDC are the wrong forums in every case — sometimes the petitioner lives there, or the relevant USCIS office sits there, or the strategic value of a D.C. Circuit appeal is worth the risk. But it does mean the choice should be deliberate.

2. The form type predicts the playbook.

I-485 and N-400 cases continue to resolve overwhelmingly via voluntary dismissal because USCIS retains the operational ability to adjudicate and moot the dispute. I-130 consular-processing cases face the consular-nonreviewability defense, which DDC has interpreted on a case-by-case basis. EB-5 cases face the steepest hill anywhere. Asylum delay cases are an emerging area where the law is still being developed.

3. "Success rate" is a misleading frame.

A petitioner who reads that "85% of cases in EDNY settle" should understand that this almost always means voluntary dismissal under Rule 41 after USCIS adjudicates the underlying application. The functional success rate of mandamus — measured by "did the petitioner get a decision on their underlying application?" — is in the 80–90% range across all seven districts. The districts diverge on how that decision arrives, not on whether it usually arrives.

4. Past performance does not predict future results.

USCIS policy shifts, circuit-court rulings, and changes at the U.S. Attorney's Office level can move these percentages quickly. The Fifth Circuit's Cheejati decision in 2024 reshaped SDTX practice within a single litigation cycle. Comparable rulings could change the picture in any of the seven districts at any time. Any decision on where to file should be informed by current docket review, not by historical estimates.

IX. How to read this analysis

The honest answer to "what does the data show" for USCIS mandamus practice in these seven districts is that the public record is partial, the proxies are imperfect, and the most reliable conclusions are the qualitative ones grounded in published opinions and practitioner experience. The quantitative comparisons on this page are best treated as a structured way to think about the differences across districts, not as audited statistics.

If you have a delayed USCIS application and you are weighing whether to file a mandamus petition — and where — the right analysis is case-specific. The form involved, your residence and the relevant USCIS office, the specific delay length and reason, and the underlying circuit's precedent all matter more than any aggregate figure on this page.

X. Sources

The figures, precedents, and observations on this page draw on the following public sources. Full citations are also included in the downloadable companion report.

• Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Report 717 (May 15, 2023): tracreports.org/reports/717
• Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Report 773 (May 11, 2026): tracreports.org/reports/773
• Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2024: uscourts.gov
• National Immigration Litigation Alliance, "Recent Trends in Immigration Delay Cases" Practice Advisory (May 17, 2024): NILA advisory
• American Immigration Council, "Whom to Sue and Whom to Serve in Immigration-Related District Court Litigation" (April 15, 2024): AIC advisory
• American Immigration Council, "Immigration Agencies Get Hit with Record-High Delay Lawsuits": AIC blog
• CIS Ombudsman 2024 Annual Report to Congress: dhs.gov
• Key cases referenced: Da Costa v. IPO, 80 F.4th 330 (D.C. Cir. 2023); Mukkavilli v. Jaddou, 2024 WL 1231346 (D.C. Cir. 2024); Cheejati v. Blinken, 97 F.4th 988 (5th Cir. 2024); Al-Gharawy v. DHS, 617 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D.C. 2022); Barrios Garcia v. DHS, 25 F.4th 430 (6th Cir. 2022); Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984).