Where Your I-131 Is Filed Matters More Than Any Weekly Trend

The early read for I-131 travel document approvals in Week 23 puts the median final-stage wait at 210 days, up from 181 days last week. This is a preliminary figure based on 807 approved cases, roughly 50% to 70% of the prior 12-week median weekly volume, and should be treated with appropriate caution. More importantly, the week-over-week shift appears to reflect which centers contributed more approvals this week rather than a true acceleration: the 8-week slope of +2.0 days per week carries an R² of 0.02, meaning the underlying trend is essentially flat and the regression explains almost none of the week-to-week variation.

Range runs 137 to 269 days over 12 weeks

Over the last 12 weeks, I-131 medians have ranged from 137 days (W15, Apr 6) to 269 days (W12, Mar 16), with no directional pattern the regression can confirm. The flat R² of 0.02 means the +2.0 day-per-week slope carries essentially no predictive value. Readers are better served by anchoring to the 12-week trailing average of 197 days as a steadier reference than any single week's reading.

The center breakdown this week tells a sharply divided story. IOE (electronic filings, 222 approved cases this week) cleared at a median of 76 days. WAC (California Service Center, 278 approved) cleared at 139 days. LIN (Nebraska Service Center, 277 approved) cleared at 378 days. The gap between IOE and LIN is 302 days. For applicants, the receipt prefix on their I-797 notice is the single largest predictor of wait time this week, larger than any system-wide trend in the data. Note that the centers handle different volumes and case mixes, so this is a population comparison rather than a direct performance ranking.

WAC's trajectory is the most reliable single signal in this week's data. Its slope of -8.4 days per week over 8 weeks, with an R² of 0.63, indicates a consistent and statistically grounded improvement. LIN's -1.6 day-per-week drift over the same period (R² = 0.07) is too noisy to call a trend. MSC (National Benefits Center, 30 cases this week) is moving in the opposite direction at +18.2 days per week (R² = 0.41), but the sample is small enough that this reading warrants caution before drawing conclusions.

Drawing on the Stage durations data (raw percentiles, 30-day window), cases currently sitting at the 'Case Was Updated To Show Fingerprints Were Taken' status show a median wait of 342 days, with the 25th percentile (p25) at 277 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 408 days across 23,462 cases, representing 7.6% of the pending pool. Cases at the primary 'Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent' status, which accounts for 33.5% of pending volume, sit at a median of 207 days across 103,244 cases, roughly 4.5 times the volume of the biometrics stage. These two stages together account for over 40% of all pending I-131 cases, suggesting most of the active backlog (pending cases awaiting adjudication) is in queue ahead of the case decision step, not stuck at a later decision point.

Cases that reach the 'Case Is Still Being Processed By USCIS' status are near the end of their wait. The approval cohort (a group of cases) data (weighted-average over the last 12 weeks) shows 6,375 cases at that processing stage with a median final-stage wait of 18 days, which is fast. The bottleneck is in reaching active review, not in moving through it once the adjudication (USCIS's case decision step) begins.