USCIS Shutdown: What Keeps Running, What Goes Dark, and DOL Delays

During a USCIS government shutdown, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services generally stays open and keeps processing cases, because the agency is funded almost entirely by the fees applicants pay rather than by congressional appropriations. Interviews happen, biometrics appointments happen, green cards get adjudicated, and naturalization ceremonies go forward. The complications sit around the edges: a handful of USCIS-run programs depend on appropriations and go dark, and other agencies that USCIS relies on can freeze work that only they can do.

Since October 2025, the immigration system has absorbed three separate funding lapses, including a 43-day government-wide shutdown from October 1 to November 12, 2025, and an extended partial shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security that began February 14, 2026 and, as of mid-2026, remains unresolved.¹

What Keeps Running at USCIS

Fee funding is the reason a shutdown feels different at USCIS than at most federal agencies. During the 2022 shutdown, only about one percent of USCIS staff were furloughed.² As of March 2026, all USCIS field offices, application support centers, asylum offices, and international offices were reported open and operational.³

If a particular office does close, USCIS automatically reschedules field office and international office interviews and biometrics appointments. InfoPass and other appointment types have to be rescheduled by the applicant.³

Programs That Go Dark

A few USCIS-administered programs rely on congressional funding or authorization rather than fees, and those are the ones that stop.

E-Verify. The employment verification system is congressionally funded and typically goes offline. USCIS suspended E-Verify on October 1, 2025 and did not restore it until October 9.⁴ With the system down, employers could not create or view cases, enroll new accounts, or reach customer support.⁵ USCIS suspended the three-day rule for case creation and gave employees extra time to resolve Tentative Nonconfirmations. During the February 2026 DHS shutdown, however, E-Verify stayed up.⁶ Employers still have to complete Form I-9 within the normal three-business-day window regardless of whether E-Verify is running.

Conrad 30 J-1 waivers. The program that lets foreign medical graduates waive the two-year foreign residence requirement in exchange for working in underserved areas needs periodic congressional extension. Foreign nationals who entered J-1 status on or after October 1, 2025 became ineligible for the waiver when funding lapsed. A reauthorization bill, H.R. 1585, is pending in the 119th Congress but has not been enacted as of mid-2026.⁷⁸

EB-4 non-minister religious workers. The Special Immigrant Religious Worker program for non-ministers sunset and was not immediately reauthorized. On February 3, 2026, the president signed H.R. 7148, extending the program through September 30, 2026.⁹

The EB-5 Immigrant Investor Regional Center Program is congressionally authorized but funded through September 30, 2027, and has not been affected by any of the recent lapses.¹

The Department of Labor Bottleneck

The biggest indirect problem is not at USCIS at all. It’s at the Department of Labor. When DOL closes, its Office of Foreign Labor Certification shuts down and the Foreign Labor Application Gateway (FLAG) goes offline. Every Labor Condition Application, prevailing wage determination, and PERM labor certification stops moving.¹⁰

That freezes a lot of USCIS filings. H-1B, H-1B1, and E-3 petitions all require a certified LCA by statute, and USCIS cannot waive that requirement. Petitions that already had a certified LCA could proceed, but any petition needing a new certification was stuck, and paying for premium processing did not change that.¹¹ PERM-based green card cases hit the same wall.¹⁰

During the 43-day October 2025 shutdown, DOL used limited funding flexibility to keep some PERM workflows going on a temporary basis, but that did not prevent backlogs from building once funding was restored. Non-audited PERM applications already run about 16 months, and any added delay can push foreign workers past the point where their visa status runs out.¹²

Deadlines, RFEs, and Late Filings

USCIS does not grant blanket automatic extensions for response deadlines, Requests for Evidence, or filing deadlines during a shutdown. It handles these situations case by case. In past shutdowns, the agency has accepted late I-129 petitions when the filer submitted evidence that the shutdown was the primary reason for missing the deadline.¹ USCIS has also indicated it will consider favorable discretion when a shutdown prevented someone from obtaining a necessary DOL certification in time to file an extension of stay or change of status.¹⁰

For E-Verify, USCIS has extended compliance deadlines during past outages, suspending the three-day case creation rule and giving employees more time on Tentative Nonconfirmations.⁴

Where Things Stand in Mid-2026

The current situation is a partial one. Most of the federal government has been funded through September 30, 2026, but DHS funding lapsed on February 14, 2026 and remained unresolved through mid-2026.¹¹³¹⁴

Two other agencies matter for people with pending cases. Immigration courts, which sit under the Department of Justice rather than DHS, are fully funded through the rest of fiscal year 2026 and are not affected by the DHS lapse.¹ State Department consular operations generally continue during a shutdown because they, too, are largely fee-funded, though some posts may scale back to diplomatic visas and emergency cases if fee revenue runs short.¹⁵

Why Delays Still Compound

A shutdown that technically leaves USCIS open still lands on top of a system that is already under strain. The USCIS case backlog reached 11.6 million by the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, more than triple the 3.5 million pending a decade earlier. At processing rates as of September 2025, clearing that backlog would take an estimated 13.8 months, up from 9.4 months just nine months earlier.¹⁶

Some categories have grown especially quickly. Pending Temporary Protected Status applications rose from roughly 465,000 in December 2024 to nearly 1.2 million by September 2025. Employment authorization requests tied to pending green card applications more than doubled over the same window, from about 154,000 to 373,000. Denial rates climbed too: TPS denials went from 2.9 percent to 12.8 percent between the first and fourth quarters of fiscal year 2025, and employment authorization denials rose from 5.1 percent to 13.6 percent.¹⁶

Set against those numbers, even a shutdown that spares USCIS itself can add real time to a case. DOL backlogs pile up during every closure and take months to work off. Foreign workers whose PERM or LCA processing stalls may run out of authorized stay. If you have a case in the pipeline, the practical guidance is straightforward: file what you can, keep evidence of any shutdown-caused delay in case you need to ask USCIS to accept a late submission, and treat any deadline tied to a DOL certification as the most fragile piece of your timeline.

1
AILA. Practice Alert: What Happens if the Government Shuts Down
2
American Immigration Council. What a Government Shutdown Means for the Immigration System
3
USCIS. USCIS Office Closings
4
Barley Snyder. Government Shutdown Suspends E-Verify
5
Seyfarth Shaw. USCIS Suspends E-Verify Amid Government Shutdown
6
Equifax Workforce Solutions. Government Shutdown 2026: E-Verify Availability and Practical Takeaways for Employers
7
USCIS. Conrad 30 Waiver Program
8
U.S. Congress. H.R. 1585 – Conrad State 30 and Physician Access Reauthorization Act
9
USCIS. Special Immigrant Religious Workers
10
Duane Morris. How a Government Shutdown Would Impact U.S. Immigration Processes
11
Greenberg Traurig. Government Shutdown: What Employers Need to Know About Immigration Services
12
Envoy Global. U.S. Government Shutdown Impact on Immigration Services
13
Cato Institute. How the Administration Plans to Spend the Largest Immigration Enforcement Funding Surge in History
14
NPR. Immigration Enforcement Will Remain Largely Uninterrupted by the Government Shutdown
15
U.S. Embassy Germany. 2025 Lapse in Appropriations
16
American Immigration Council. USCIS Backlogs and Processing Trends Dashboard