I-140 Final-Stage Wait Jumps 20 Days in a Single Week, Outlier Detector Fires at 25.4 Sigma

For the five weeks ending June 15, the I-140 final-stage wait held between 20 and 22 days. This week it rose to 41 days, the largest single-week move in the 12-week series. The 12-week trailing average is 28 days, and the prior 12-week high was 44 days (the week of April 6), so this week's reading sits near that ceiling. The outlier detector fired at a z-score of 25.42 against the prior 4-week trailing mean, a technically extreme departure. The data does not tell us why; the reading may reflect a batch of longer-pending cases clearing in the same week, or it may reflect broader queue pressure from the growing active backlog of pending cases, but a single week is not enough to confirm any mechanism.

The 8-week regression carries an R² of 0.19 and a slope of +1.3 days per week. An R² that low does not support asserting a direction: weekly medians have ranged from 20 to 44 days over the 12-week window, and the week-to-week swings dwarf the underlying slope. This week's 41-day reading is, under that lens, consistent with the series' normal scatter, even though it sits at the high end of that range. The spike could recede next week toward the 20-to-22-day band that characterized the recent five-week stretch, or it could persist if the backlog pressure described in the next section is the driver.

Total active cases stand at 45,356, up 120.9% over the 61-day window ending July 7, 2026. The June 2026 filing-month cohort (a group of cases all filed in the same month) accounts for 10,958 of those active cases, the largest single contributor to the growth. It is worth separating two metrics that can look similar but measure different things: the weekly final-stage median reflects whoever happened to be approved in a given week, while the filing-month cohort burndown tracks how a specific group of cases progresses toward approval over time. A week in which many longer-pending cases clear can push the weekly median up even if the overall queue is moving normally.

Same-age comparisons across cohorts give a cleaner read on pace. The April 2026 cohort, now 13 weeks old, has cleared 51.2% of its 20,062 total cases. The February 2026 cohort, now 22 weeks old, has cleared 57.5% of its 17,422 total cases. Cases filed more recently are clearing more slowly at comparable ages, a pattern consistent with the growing active backlog. Inter-cohort comparisons are only meaningful at the same age, so the February and April figures above are not directly comparable to each other; they illustrate where each cohort stands on its own trajectory.