The Eastern District of New York covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau and Suffolk — one of the largest concentrations of first-generation immigrants in the country — and it carries a correspondingly heavy delay docket. What distinguishes EDNY as a forum is not a distinctive substantive rule but a procedural pattern: the great majority of its cases end when the agency acts, and the law that most often decides them is the law of mootness rather than the law of unreasonable delay.
Getting the case here: the venue analysis
A civil action against federal officers sued in their official capacity is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1391(e)(1), which is considerably more generous than the ordinary venue statute. Venue is proper in any judicial district in which:
- § 1391(e)(1)(A) — a defendant resides. For officers sued in an official capacity, residence means the district of the officer's official station. The Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of USCIS sit in Washington, D.C., which is why so many delay cases can be filed in the District of Columbia regardless of where the plaintiff lives.
- § 1391(e)(1)(B) — a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred. In a delay case the operative omission is the failure to decide, which points at whichever office is actually sitting on the file — a field office, a service center, or a national unit.
- § 1391(e)(1)(C) — the plaintiff resides, so long as no real property is involved in the action. For an individual with a stalled application this is the simplest and most common hook, and it is the one that requires the least pleading.
The three prongs are independent. Satisfying any one of them makes venue proper, and a plaintiff with more than one available prong has a genuine choice of forum — which is where the case law below starts to matter.
EDNY covers Kings, Queens, Richmond, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. The Brooklyn, Queens and Holtsville field offices and the New York City Asylum Office all sit within or serve the district, so for most petitioners the residence prong under § 1391(e)(1)(C) and the omission prong under § 1391(e)(1)(B) point to the same place.
Pleading venue on the location of the office holding the file can point away from the district you want. Much New York-area work is processed at the Vermont Service Center, which sits in the District of Vermont; the National Benefits Center, the Immigrant Investor Program Office and the National Visa Center all sit elsewhere again. Where several prongs are available, plead the one you actually intend to rely on, and expect the government to test it. The transfer analysis under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) is treated separately in Defending Venue Transfer, and the broader forum-selection question in Choice of Forum.
The governing law in the Second Circuit
There is no “writ” to petition for
Rule 81(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure abolished the writ of mandamus in the district courts; relief is sought instead as an ordinary civil action in the nature of mandamus under 28 U.S.C. § 1361. See In re Nagy, 89 F.3d 115, 116 (2d Cir. 1996). This is not pedantry. In Espin v. Gantner, discussed below, the court opened its jurisdictional analysis by observing that the petitioner “prays for a form of relief abolished over seventy years ago with the promulgation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.” Captioning matters.
The three elements
A plaintiff seeking relief in the nature of mandamus must establish:
- a clear and indisputable right to the relief sought — In re Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., 861 F.2d 1307, 1312 (2d Cir. 1988);
- a plainly defined and peremptory duty on the defendant's part to do the act in question — Lovallo v. Froehlke, 468 F.2d 340, 343 (2d Cir. 1972); and
- that no other adequate remedy is available — id.
Relief will not issue to compel a discretionary act. Anderson v. Bowen, 881 F.2d 1, 5 (2d Cir. 1989); Work v. United States ex rel. Rives, 267 U.S. 175, 177 (1925); Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U.S. 602, 616 (1984); Pittston Coal Group v. Sebben, 488 U.S. 105, 121 (1988). The entire fight in a delay case is therefore over characterization: the government says the pending application is a discretionary matter, and the plaintiff answers that the decision may be discretionary but the duty to decide is not.
This is the decision the government cites in almost every Second Circuit delay case, for the sentence that judicial creation of a duty would carry “the potential for mischievous interference with the functioning of already overburdened administrative agencies.” 569 F.2d at 1182. The sentence is real. Its subject is not.
The duty the court declined to create was a duty to conduct and complete a discretionary fraud investigation that a consular officer had requested as a predicate to issuing visas abroad. The Second Circuit was careful to separate that from the agency's duty to act on the preference petitions themselves — a duty it held had already been discharged when the petitions were approved: “The INS's duty in the matter ended there.” The court affirmed dismissal while expressly vacating the district court's contrary statement that the agency had a further duty to investigate.
Wan Shih Hsieh is authority that a discretionary investigative function cannot be compelled. It is not a holding that an agency may leave indefinitely undecided a benefit application it is required to decide. Briefing that does not draw that line concedes the strongest adverse authority in the circuit.
The APA route, and why it usually matters more
Two APA provisions carry the weight. 5 U.S.C. § 555(b) requires that “within a reasonable time, each agency shall proceed to conclude a matter presented to it,” and 5 U.S.C. § 706(1) authorizes a reviewing court to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.” The APA is not itself a grant of jurisdiction — Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 105–07 (1977) — but in combination with the federal-question statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1331, it supplies one.
The six-factor framework for assessing whether a delay is unreasonable comes from In re Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70, 79–80 (D.C. Cir. 1984). District courts in this circuit apply the TRAC factors, but they arrive from another circuit — a distinction worth preserving when a government brief treats them as though they settled the question. The factors are set out at length in The TRAC Factors, and the choice between the two theories in APA Delay vs. Mandamus.
What EDNY has actually held
EDNY's published record on the threshold question is favorable but thin; its published record on mootness is the one that shapes day-to-day practice.
A citizen sued under § 1361 to compel adjudication of an immigrant visa application filed for his wife. The consulate had already refused the application. The court dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, on the principle that “[a]n action seeking to direct a federal official to perform an act that the official has already performed is moot,” citing Barrett v. United States, 105 F.3d 793 (2d Cir. 1997), and the district's own Lihua Jiang v. Clinton and Aizah v. Holder.
It also refused leave to amend into a challenge to the refusal itself as futile, because under American Academy of Religion v. Napolitano, 573 F.3d 115, 123 (2d Cir. 2009), “a consular officer's decision to deny a visa is immune from judicial review.”
The high voluntary-dismissal rate reported below is not a quirk of local culture. It is Xian Yong Zeng operating as designed. A delay action asks the court to order an adjudication; once the agency adjudicates — in either direction — the claim is moot and the court loses jurisdiction over it. That is a win where the object was to force a decision. It is a dead end where the client's real complaint is the substance of the decision, and in the consular context American Academy of Religion forecloses the follow-on challenge as well. Screen for that distinction before filing, not after. See Consular Processing and Muñoz & Consular Nonreviewability.
An unpublished decision, but a consequential one: it holds that adjudicating an I-485 is not committed to the agency's discretion because the agency is required to do it. It is cited for that proposition outside the district as well as within it — including by the District of Connecticut in Alkeylani v. DHS, 514 F. Supp. 2d 258, 263 (D. Conn. 2007), and by S.D.N.Y. in Nigmadzhanov.
It is cited here as those courts describe it. Because the decision is unreported, counsel relying on it should pull the order itself rather than the secondary description.
The most frequently cited adverse EDNY authority in practitioner advisories is N-N v. Mayorkas, 540 F. Supp. 3d 240 (E.D.N.Y. 2021), a U-visa case in which the court granted the government's motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part, dismissing some claims on TRAC-factor grounds and others as moot while allowing the case to continue. N-N is the exception rather than the rule, and the U-visa context is distinct enough that the holding does not extend cleanly to I-485, I-130 or N-400 actions.
The decisions discussed above are this district's published landmarks. They are not a survey of how the district ruled last month, and no honest guide can offer one. The overwhelming majority of USCIS delay cases end without a written opinion — the agency adjudicates after service and the parties file a stipulation of dismissal, or the court disposes of the matter by unpublished order. Those dispositions never enter the reported case law and are not searchable in the free databases.
So the published line tells you how this bench reasons when it does write. What happens in the ordinary case is practice, not precedent, and it is described as such wherever it appears on this page.
Estimated disposition posture
My estimate is that roughly 83% of resolved EDNY cases end in voluntary dismissal after USCIS adjudication, with about 10% dismissed on a government Rule 12 motion. The total "case-reached-a-judge" rate of about 13% is one of the lowest in the seven-district set I analyze. These figures are estimates synthesized from secondary sources — see the flagship comparison for methodology.
Strategic considerations
- Decide what the client actually wants before filing. A delay action buys a decision, not a favorable decision. Where the anticipated adjudication is a denial, mandamus may simply accelerate it.
- Lead with the APA claim under § 1331 and plead § 1361 in the alternative — the same drafting logic that governs across the Second Circuit.
- Distinguish Wan Shih Hsieh in the complaint. The government will quote its “overburdened administrative agencies” language; the answer is that the case concerned a discretionary investigation, not a mandatory adjudication.
- Anticipate the mootness dismissal and preserve the fee position. Where the agency adjudicates only after suit, the sequence matters to any EAJA application — see EAJA Attorneys' Fees.
- Treat U-visa delay claims as their own category in light of N-N, rather than assuming the general I-485 posture carries over.
When EDNY is the right choice
EDNY is the natural forum for petitioners residing in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Nassau or Suffolk, and for those whose adjudicating office is the Brooklyn, Queens or Holtsville field office. It is a sensible choice where the petitioner has flexibility under § 1391(e) and prefers a Second Circuit forum to a District of Columbia or Fifth Circuit alternative.
Its practical strength is that routine cases resolve quickly and without a contested ruling. Its corresponding weakness is that the same dynamic keeps favorable precedent from developing: a district whose cases moot out is a district with little written law to cite next time.
Considering a mandamus petition in Eastern District of New York?
Forum choice is part of the analysis from day one. If you have a delayed USCIS application and you want to discuss whether EDNY is the right venue — or whether a different district would be stronger — reach out for a no-cost case evaluation.