I-360 Final-Stage Wait Hits 178 Days, a Statistical Outlier Atop a Rising Trend

The I-360 final-stage wait reached 178 days the week of May 18, the highest reading in the 12-week window and 8 days above the prior week's 170 (a +4.8% move). The 12-week trailing average is 169 days, so this week's reading sits 9 days above that baseline. An outlier_week_high anomaly flag fired at z = 3.96 against the prior 4-week trailing mean, nearly four standard deviations above that recent trend line. That places the reading outside the range of routine week-to-week scatter.

The 8-day move does not happen in isolation. Over the 8 weeks ending May 18, the median has trended upward at a slope of +1.6 days per week (R² = 0.67, a moderate fit). Since the W16 low of 162 days, the median has climbed 16 days across 6 weeks. This week's reading may reflect a one-week shock layered on that underlying drift, or it may partly be a sample-composition artifact: 840 approvals is below the recent weekly norm of roughly 900 to 1,000 cases, and a lower-volume week can produce an elevated median if the cases that cleared were disproportionately long-pending ones. The data does not allow distinguishing between these possibilities from a single week.

All 840 approved cases this week are attributed to MSC, the National Benefits Center, which posted a median of 178 days and an 8-week slope of +1.5 days per week (R² = 0.66). WAC (California Service Center) recorded 12 cases at a median of 137 days and a slope of +18.0 days per week with R² = 1.00, but a sample of 12 is too thin to draw conclusions from; a perfect R² on 12 observations most likely reflects a mathematical artifact of a small, possibly unrepresentative group rather than a genuine trend. LIN (Nebraska Service Center), with 11 cases at a 7-day median, is similarly uninformative at that volume. The story this week is MSC.

The backlog context reinforces the MSC picture. As of May 25, the active pending case count stands at 33,753 cases, up 1,583 cases (+4.9%) over just 18 days (from May 7 to May 25). The April 2026 filing-month cohort accounts for the largest share of that growth, adding roughly 505 active cases over the same window. A rising active count while approval medians are also rising is consistent with accumulating queue pressure, though the data brief does not specify whether the intake rate, approval pace, or both are driving the imbalance. Both possibilities may be at work.

The rfe_fast anomaly flag fired this week, and the numbers behind it are notable. An RFE (Request for Evidence) is USCIS's standard follow-up letter asking for missing or additional documentation; receiving one does not by itself signal denial, and most cases that receive an RFE are still approved. In most weeks, cases that received and responded to an RFE take longer to clear than plain-processing cases, often by 30 to 90 days. This week that pattern inverted: RFE-stamped cases cleared in a median of 16 days, while cases with no RFE took 183 days, an 11.77x ratio. The inversion most likely reflects a batch of older RFE-response cases that resolved quickly this week, pulling the RFE group's median down, rather than any change in adjudication policy or approach.

The stage-duration data adds context to the broader RFE picture. Of the roughly 37,800 cases observed in the last 30 days across all statuses, 7.5% carry a last status of 'Request for Initial Evidence Was Sent,' with a raw median of 49 days at that stage (25th percentile, p25, at 32 days; 75th percentile, p75, at 78 days) across 2,830 cases. Another 5.8% are at 'Response To USCIS' Request For Evidence Was Received,' with a raw median of 71 days (p25 at 32 days, p75 at 105 days) across 2,212 cases. Together, roughly 13% of the observed caseload is in some form of RFE-related status. This week's fast clearance of RFE-response approvals is a small positive signal within that picture, though a single week is not enough to characterize a trend.