I-589 processing times · Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal
Latest USCIS data: Apr–Jun 2026, from the All USCIS Application and Petition Form Types report.
Time to clear backlog
205 months
Pending applications
1,392,782
−2% vs. previous quarter
Decided in Apr–Jun 2026
20,399
not compared: USCIS nearly stopped deciding these the quarter before
Approval rate
8%
not compared: USCIS nearly stopped deciding these the quarter before
Quarter-over-quarter highlight: The pile of pending I-589 applications at USCIS shrank 2% to 1,392,782 in Apr–Jun 2026. At that quarter's pace of decisions, clearing it would take 205 months.
About the approval rate: it is the share of USCIS's own decisions that granted asylum, not the share of applicants who get asylum in the end. When an asylum office does not grant asylum to someone without legal status, it usually sends the case to an immigration court, and USCIS's report does not say if it counts these as denials.
What happened to the applications
The bars are the I-589 decisions USCIS made each quarter, approved in blue and denied in red. The amber line is the backlog: how many applications were still waiting at the end of that quarter, most of them filed in earlier ones. The dashed line is how many came in.
- Approved
- Denied
- Pending at quarter end
- Filed
The numbers are stored in a JSON file on GitHub. A diamond marks a pending count that doesn't match the quarter before's count plus the quarter's filings minus its decisions: it is what USCIS reported, but USCIS doesn't say why they differ, so the pages draw no conclusions from it.
Backlog over time
Time to clear backlog is how long USCIS would need to decide every pending case at last quarter’s pace. It is not your wait: the pile includes cases on hold and cases USCIS cannot decide yet. USCIS does not publish a processing time for this form in these reports.