I-821 TPS Approvals Post a Tentative 13-Day Drop, but the Trend Remains Volatile

Cases approved in this week's preliminary I-821 data show a time from the last reported status update to approval of 137 days, down 13 days from last week's 150. That figure is not the total wait from filing; the total wait is unavailable this week because too few approved cases have a confirmed filing date. Only 102 cases underlie this reading, which is 50% to 70% of the recent weekly pace, so the number is tentative. As of November 10, 119,702 TPS cases are tracked but not yet decided, up 361 from 28 days earlier. Every wait figure in this brief describes approved cases only and says nothing about how long those 119,702 pending cases have waited.

The "final-stage wait" is the time between the most recent status update visible in USCIS's tracking system and the approval decision. It captures the last leg of the process, not the full journey from filing. Because filing dates are unavailable for most approved cases this week, the total filing-to-approval wait cannot be computed; this brief uses only the final-stage figure.

Over the past 12 weeks, the final-stage median (the 50th percentile, p50) for I-821 approvals has ranged from 4 days in the week of July 27 to 212 days in the week of September 21, with no stable direction. The 8-week regression slope is +11.1 days per week, but the R² is only 0.29, meaning the linear trend accounts for less than a third of week-to-week movement. The series is better described as volatile than trending. The year-over-year picture is more stable: this week's 137 days compares to 269 days in the same week of 2025, a roughly 49% reduction. That comparison should be read with care because the sample sizes differ considerably: 102 cases this week versus 483 last year, so the medians may reflect different mixes of which cases happened to be approved in each respective week.

Of the cases currently at the 'USCIS Is Currently Processing the Case' stage, the largest group at 58.2% of the pipeline, the median time already spent at that status is 419 days across approximately 50,894 cases, with the middle half running from 365 days at the 25th percentile (p25) to 477 days at the 75th percentile (p75). Another 23.4% of pending cases sit at 'Case Was Received and a Receipt Notice Was Sent,' where the median time at that status is 297 days, with a p25 of 244 days and a p75 of 349 days, across about 20,429 cases. These are not final-stage medians; they measure how long cases have been parked at their current status, not how long until approval. No data in this brief can predict any individual case's remaining wait.

About 1,664 cases carry the status 'Response To USCIS Request for Evidence Was Received,' with a median of 368 days already elapsed at that stage. An RFE (Request for Evidence) is USCIS's standard follow-up letter asking for additional documents; receiving one does not by itself signal denial. Because RFE comparison data for approved cases is unavailable this week, it is not possible to separate RFE-track from non-RFE-track approved-case medians. The stage-duration figure alone shows that cases which have already responded to an RFE are waiting a substantial time for a decision.