How long is an unreasonable delay? Three rulings in eleven days put 21, 28 and 36 months on the record

Last updated 2026-11-05 · General information, not legal advice

Between 22 October and 2 November 2026, three federal district courts decided three delay cases and the government won all three: an F-1 visa held 28 months in 221(g) administrative processing, an affirmative asylum application pending three years at a USCIS asylum office, and a T visa pending 21 months. All three opinions applied the same six TRAC factors, and two of them quoted the same case-law yardstick — district courts generally treat immigration delays past five, six or seven years as unreasonable, and delays of three to five years as often not. If you are counting months toward a suit, these three opinions separate two numbers that are easy to merge: the threshold at which a complaint is worth filing, and the longer scale a court uses once it is filed.

The three decisions

Each opinion is published in full on govinfo.gov. The link in every row below is the opinion itself.

The three cases differ in benefit type, circuit and procedural stage, and arrive at the same place. The plaintiff in Sluev had already won once: on 24 February 2026 the same judge denied the government's motion to dismiss, holding that consular nonreviewability and the D.C. Circuit's Karimova decision did not bar a claim that an agency has failed to act. Past that door, the October opinion reached the delay itself, and the government prevailed.

What the courts measured against

All three opinions start from Telecommunications Research & Action Center v. FCC, 750 F.2d 70, 80 (D.C. Cir. 1984). In immigration delay cases three groups of those factors do most of the work.

Whether Congress set a deadline. For most benefits it did not. The D.C. Circuit calls 8 U.S.C. § 1571(b) — the sense of Congress that an immigration benefit application should be completed within 180 days — an aspirational statement insufficient to set a deadline, citing Da Costa v. Immigration Investor Program Office, 80 F.4th 330, 344 (D.C. Cir. 2023), so in Sluev it earned the plaintiff nothing. The same statute carries different weight in the Sixth Circuit: Barrios Garcia v. DHS, 25 F.4th 430, 454 (6th Cir. 2022) tells courts to stay mindful that Congress expressed a six-month expectation, and Erulandi therefore scored the second factor for the plaintiff. Asylum has a real statutory clock — 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(5)(A)(ii) says the interview shall commence not later than 45 days after filing — but § 1158(d)(7) says the subsection creates no enforceable right, and Singh likewise gave the plaintiff that factor. Both plaintiffs led on this factor and both lost.

The years courts borrow from case law. Absent a statutory deadline, courts look to precedent for a ruler. Two of the three opinions quote the same sentence: district courts have generally found immigration delays in excess of five, six or seven years unreasonable, while those between three and five years are often not, from Sarlak v. Pompeo, 2020 WL 3082018, *6 (D.D.C. 2020). The Northern District of California applies a tighter line, quoted in Singh: delays of four years or less are not unreasonable under the APA (5 U.S.C. § 706(1)). Thirty-six months sits inside that line, and 28 months sits inside the D.C. one.

Whether moving you forward accomplishes anything. That is the fourth factor, and it went to the government in all three opinions. Moving one applicant to the head of the queue moves everyone else back one place and produces no net gain. Sluev adds a point worth knowing before filing a consular case: judges in that district give the government this factor in 221(g) cases even where the government has established no formal queue.

Which date the count starts on

A number of months means nothing without the date it runs from, and that date is not always the day you filed. Singh states the rule it used: the period of delay runs from the last government action to the issuance of the decision. USCIS had taken no action on his file after the September 2023 filing, so the count started there. Sluev ran differently. His visa application received a non-final refusal and entered administrative processing on 26 June 2024, and the court counted 28 months from that day. The months he spent waiting for the interview are outside the figure the court weighed.

So each time the government acts, the measurement can restart from that day. That is our reading of how these two opinions counted, not a rule either of them announced. It matters most to applicants in administrative processing: the date a court is likely to count from is the one on the 221(g) notice, not the day the DS-160 went in or the day of the interview. Our page on suing over 221(g) administrative processing covers when you can act; this is the date a court starts counting afterwards.

What this means for a delay case

The filing threshold and the winning scale are two different numbers. The thresholds on when to sue USCIS — 12 months for an I-485, 6 months for an I-765, 48 months for affirmative asylum — answer when a complaint is worth filing. These three opinions answer how a court weighs the wait once the complaint is in, on a scale marked in years. Both numbers are real, and the second one is longer.

Our 48-month asylum threshold lines up with the case law. The threshold on asylum pending for years is the longest we publish, and Singh shows why: the Northern District of California applies a four-year line, and a plaintiff three years in met it head-on.

A complaint that pleads only elapsed months is the weakest one to hold. Erulandi quotes INS v. Miranda, 459 U.S. 14, 18 (1982) for the proposition that the passage of time alone cannot establish unreasonable delay, and it lost on something specific: the amended complaint never alleged that USCIS was departing from its own queue. The judge set it against Barrios Garcia, where the plaintiffs alleged that later-filed U visa applications were decided before theirs and that USCIS systematically prioritised later filings, which carried the first factor for them in the Sixth Circuit. Erulandi says plainly that the plaintiff has to allege it first; a court will not assume it and make the government disprove it.

What you can do while you wait is part of the weighing. Singh gave the third and fifth factors slightly to the government because he could live and work in the United States while his application sat. Erulandi went further: after he sued, USCIS issued bona fide determinations, granted deferred action and approved employment authorisation for the whole family through May 2030, and the court weighed those factors for the government, contrasting the Barrios Garcia plaintiffs who could get no Social Security number, no insurance, no lawful work and faced removal. In Sluev the harms — a Dartmouth master's programme postponed repeatedly, the money committed to it, anxiety and depression — weighed modestly for the plaintiff, and the court rejected the government's framing that relieving him would come at another applicant's expense, writing that F-1 adjudications are not a zero-sum game. That weight was still outvoted by factors one, two and four.

Suing can move something without moving the final decision. Erulandi filed on 10 May 2026. In July 2026 USCIS made the bona fide determinations and approved the work permits, and the government then moved to dismiss the case as moot. He amended to press only for a final adjudication of the T visa, and on 2 November that was dismissed. This is one case's record, not a statistic.

What you ask the court to order changes the analysis. Singh states that mandamus relief is not available to compel the scheduling of an interview. Sluev shows the other common handling: the court found the APA an adequate remedy and dismissed the parallel mandamus claim on that basis. Both points go to the relief a complaint requests.

Losing once does not close the door. Singh ends by limiting itself to the application as it stood, and says it does not preclude a later claim of unreasonable delay under different circumstances.

What to do with this

1. Fix your start date first. Use the Received Date on the Form I-797C, or the date on the 221(g) notice. Every later action by USCIS or the consulate can move the date a court counts from.
2. Keep the two numbers apart. One tells you when a complaint is worth filing; the other is the scale a court applies. The seven signs page covers the first.
3. Finish the free routes. A case inquiry and an inquiry through your member of Congress cost nothing and leave a record that USCIS had the opportunity to act.
4. Write down concrete harm, not the stress of waiting. No work authorisation, no insurance, exposure to removal, an inability to petition for family — those are the interests these three courts actually weighed.
5. Keep anything suggesting the agency is off its own queue. Cases filed at the same time or later that already have decisions are the kind of fact the Barrios Garcia plaintiffs brought. Material like that is more use in a conversation with a lawyer than a count of months.
6. Do not read another district's ruling as your own forecast. Venue follows where you live, or the petitioner's place of business in employer-sponsored categories, and the scales differ from one district to the next. Ten mandamus mistakes covers the venue question.
7. Be precise about the order you are asking for. An order to decide and an order to schedule an interview are handled differently.

To see where your own wait stands against the threshold for your category, run the 60-second check using the receipt date on your Form I-797C.