I-539 Final-Stage Waits Have Climbed 44 Days in Seven Weeks With No Sign of Slowing

From the week of August 3 (94 days) to the week of September 21 (138 days), the I-539 final-stage wait climbed 44 days across seven consecutive weeks. The 8-week linear regression slope is +6.2 days per week, with R²=0.93 — a fit tight enough that the directional signal is consistent, not the product of a single outlier week. This week's +7-day week-over-week jump is the latest step in a pattern that has held since early August; the data does not show a cause, only a sustained directional signal.

At 138 days, the current median sits 5 days above the same week last year (133 days) and 22 days above the 12-week trailing average of 116 days. The 25th percentile (p25) this week is 99 days and the 75th percentile (p75) is 169 days, a spread that shows even faster-clearing cases are being drawn upward as the overall distribution shifts. Cases at the p75 are now taking 169 days, up from roughly 139 days at the same percentile in early August.

The Texas Service Center (SRC) handled 3,020 of this week's 3,814 approved cases — 79% of total volume — and carries a slope of +11.2 days per week (R²=0.94), the steepest center-level acceleration in the data. By contrast, the Vermont Service Center (EAC), with 317 cases this week, posted a median of 297 days, and the California Service Center (WAC), with 262 cases, posted 273 days. The `uneven_centers` anomaly flag fired with a value of 290.36, indicating that the spread across centers widened this week relative to its own 8-week trailing baseline — this flag marks a change in the gap, not merely the existence of one. SRC's 33% transferred share means a meaningful portion of its approvals were transfer-touched cases, while WAC and EAC each show 0% transferred; that composition difference means the center-level medians are not directly comparable populations.

Electronic filings processed through IOE (139 cases this week) cleared at a median of 7 days, with a slope of 0.0 and R²=0.00 — a stable, fast-clearing pathway that does not contribute to the SRC-driven aggregate trend. Nebraska Service Center (LIN, the USCIS facility in Lincoln, NE) processed 57 cases at a median of 176 days, with a slope of -2.6 days per week, though R²=0.39 indicates a weak fit. Receipt prefixes are fixed at intake and do not determine where a case is ultimately adjudicated; the center medians describe the population approved at each center this week, not a forecast for any individual case.

The uneven_centers flag did not simply detect a wide gap — it detected that the gap widened past a threshold (z-score value 290.36) separating this week from the prior eight, a statistically flagged shift.

Filing-month cohort (cases filed in the same calendar month) burndown data shows the approval curve at each age. Cases filed in April 2026 are now 25 weeks old and 42.5% cleared (7,701 approved out of 18,117 total in that cohort). The May 2026 cohort, at 21 weeks, is 34.0% cleared; June 2026, at 17 weeks, is 30.0%; July 2026, at 12 weeks, is 19.1%; and August 2026, at 8 weeks, is 15.7%. Across all filing-month cohorts combined — a much larger population than these individual rows — the total active pending count stood at 183,717 cases as of the September 28 snapshot, down 2,459 (-1.3%) over the prior 28 days. The May 2026 cohort saw the largest single-cohort reduction in active cases (-1,443) among the more matured groups.

The cohort percentages and the 138-day weekly median measure different things. The weekly median reflects cases approved during the week of September 21 — many of which were filed months earlier — and describes the final-stage wait for that approval batch. The cohort burndown tracks what fraction of a specific filing month has cleared as of the snapshot date. A reader who filed in June 2026 remains approximately 70% likely still pending, based on the cohort table. The two metrics should not be read together as a single timeline.