I-131 Travel Document Waits Have Nearly Tripled in a Year, and the Trend Continues

The I-131 final-stage median (measured from the case's last reported status to approval) came in at 302 days this week, compared with 110 days the same week last year — a gain of 192 days, or 175%. The 8-week regression slope of +13.2 days per week (R²=0.66) indicates the acceleration is sustained across the window, not confined to a single week. We can describe what the data shows; the data brief does not tell us why this rise is occurring.

This week's 20-day week-over-week decline (from 322 to 302 days) is a modest pullback within a broader upward arc. The 25th percentile (p25) now sits at 288 days, meaning even the faster quarter of cases approved this week waited just over nine months. The 75th percentile (p75) was 338 days. The week-to-week dip does not signal a reversal of the underlying trend given the slope and fit.

The Nebraska Service Center (LIN) handled 1,438 of 2,299 approvals this week — about 63% of total volume — at a median of 407 days. Its 8-week slope of +4.0 days per week means the center's median has continued to drift upward, adding roughly 32 days over the past two months. IOE, which processes electronically filed cases, handled 651 approvals at a median of 116 days; both centers show 0% transferred share, so the comparison reflects cases of similar routing origin, though case mix may still differ between e-filed and paper-filed applications.

WAC (California Service Center) handled 101 cases at 163 days this week, also with 0% transferred. The National Benefits Center (MSC) processed 69 cases at 238 days, but 57% of MSC's approvals this week were transfer-touched — meaning a significant share arrived from another center before being decided here. That high transfer share makes a direct MSC-to-LIN or MSC-to-IOE comparison difficult to interpret; the populations are structurally different. We do not have data on staffing levels, routing policy, or workload distribution across centers, so we cannot attribute the LIN–IOE gap to any of those factors.

The uneven_centers anomaly flag fired this week with a value of 406.40, indicating the spread between centers widened relative to its own 8-week baseline — specifically, this week's coefficient of variation across centers exceeded the trailing baseline by more than two standard deviations. The flag marks a change in the gap, not a judgment on any center's efficiency or capacity.

Drawing on the Stage durations (30-day raw) data, 46,004 cases are currently at the 'Case Was Updated To Show Fingerprints Were Taken' status, with a median wait of 377 days, a 25th percentile of 288 days, and a 75th percentile of 414 days. A separate, large group of cases sits at 'Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent' — across 156,267 cases, representing about 33% of the active pipeline by stage count, with a median of 242 days. A smaller received-status group ('Case Was Received,' across 46,850 cases) shows a median of 79 days. Together these received-status cases account for roughly 43% of active pipeline volume.

By contrast, cases that reach the active 'processing' stage clear in a median of just 27 days, based on the weighted-average data from the Approval cohort by last status. Once adjudication (USCIS's case-decision step: approval, denial, or a further information request) begins, it moves relatively quickly. A long wait at the biometrics (fingerprint appointment) stage is the normal queue, not a sign the case has stalled; the status typically jumps directly from fingerprints to approval without intermediate updates.

Once a case reaches active processing, it clears in about 27 days; the long wait is in the queue before that step begins.