Trump Admin Ends In-Country Green Cards, Forcing Millions to Depart

On May 21, 2026, USCIS released Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199. It’s a document that effectively scraps 70 years of precedent. For decades, legal visa holders could swap to permanent residency without ever crossing the border. Not anymore. The memo makes the Form I-485, or Adjustment of Status, a rare exception rather than the rule. Now, applicants are being pushed toward 'consular processing' at U.S. embassies overseas. Depending on where you're from, that wait can last anywhere from a year to several.

Adjustment of Status is just the legal term for letting someone already in the U.S. apply for a green card without leaving. It’s a big deal. About 21% of American married couples include a spouse born abroad, and for them, this policy is an immediate financial gut punch. The American Immigration Lawyers Association estimates that forcing people to process abroad adds between $5,000 and $12,000 in costs per person. That's for flights, multi-week hotel stays, medical exams, and the income lost while they're stuck waiting in a foreign country.

Consular processing used to be for people who didn't have legal entry yet. But USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler says the agency needs to prioritize naturalization applications and crime-victim visas. It sounds like a resource shift, but the numbers don't quite add up. USCIS has a backlog of over 1.1 million pending applications. Moving those files to the State Department doesn't make the work disappear. It just dumps it on a consular system that's already drowning, especially in places like India, Mexico, and the Philippines.

“Roughly 1 in 5 married couples in the US includes a spouse born abroad. That's not a fringe group, it's 21% of married couple households.”

The real winners here aren't immediately obvious. While the government saves on overhead, specialized law firms are already adjusting their fees. Because the memo allows for domestic adjustment in 'extraordinary circumstances,' lawyers are expecting a surge in high-fee litigation. Attorneys are charging between $300 and $600 an hour just to write the complex waivers needed to prove 'extreme hardship.' A Fortune 500 tech worker might have their company pay for it. But for a regular American spouse, those fees could wipe out an entire year of savings.

Then there's the 'closed window' problem. It’s a legal mess. People from countries like Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, and several others are in a bind because U.S. consular services there are basically offline. The administration is telling them they have to leave the U.S. to apply, but they have no functioning consulate to visit. More than 30 U.S. consulates are currently running at less than 50% capacity. Following the law now means facing a multi-year exile for legal residents who are already here.

This is the third time since 2024 the administration has used 'discretionary authority' to sidestep what Congress intended with Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Back in the 50s, Congress built this path to help the economy by keeping workers on the job while they applied. This new memo does the opposite. It’s about deterrence. Critics say that by making the process expensive and disruptive, the administration is pushing 'self-deportation.' It doesn't matter if you have legal status or a family here.

The kicker is that nobody knows how USCIS will define 'extraordinary' on a day-to-day basis. The guidance is thin. That leaves the decision up to the whims of individual officers, which usually leads to a mess of inconsistent rulings and constant appeals. Having a U.S. citizen spouse or a high-tech job isn't a guarantee of a stable future anymore. Expect a wave of federal lawsuits soon. Advocates are already arguing that a simple memo shouldn't be able to override federal law.