Introduction
USCIS has released its fiscal year 2026 second-quarter data on Temporary Protected Status applications, revealing that 574,448 Form I-821 applications remained pending as of March 31, 2026. The data, published by the agency’s Office of Performance and Quality, covers the period from October 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026, and breaks down TPS application receipts, approvals, denials, and pending totals by country of designation. For the hundreds of thousands of individuals whose work authorization and protection from removal depend directly on TPS adjudications, understanding the TPS application backlog figures — and what they mean for wait times and planning — is immediately consequential.
Background
Temporary Protected Status is a humanitarian designation that the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant to nationals of countries experiencing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Individuals granted TPS receive protection from deportation and are generally eligible for employment authorization for the duration of the designation period. Beneficiaries must file Form I-821 to register or re-register, and they must do so within USCIS-specified registration windows tied to each country’s active designation.
Because TPS does not provide a direct pathway to permanent residence, most beneficiaries remain in a cycle of re-registration, filing new I-821 applications each time their country’s designation is extended. This structural feature means that applications do not simply resolve and close out — they accumulate and roll forward. The pending caseload at any given moment therefore reflects not only new registrants but also re-registrants from prior periods whose cases have not yet been fully adjudicated.
What Is Changing
The Q2 FY2026 report is a statistical release rather than a policy change, but the numbers it captures reflect significant adjudication activity alongside a still-massive unresolved caseload. Across the first two quarters of FY2026 combined, USCIS received 2,256 new I-821 applications, approved 18,219, and denied 1,884. Despite those approvals outpacing new receipts by a wide margin, the total pending count dropped only modestly — from 582,813 at the end of Q1 to 574,448 at the end of Q2 — a reduction of approximately 8,365 cases over three months.
The data uses suppression codes to protect the privacy of small-population country groups: a “D” indicates figures were withheld to meet disclosure standards, and an “H” marks values suppressed to prevent indirect disclosure of a withheld figure. These codes appear most frequently for Burma, Ethiopia, Honduras, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, limiting the granularity of analysis available for those nationalities.
Who Is Affected
The populations most directly affected by these figures are nationals of the fifteen currently designated countries covered in the report. Haiti accounts for the single largest pending caseload by a substantial margin, with 332,200 applications awaiting a decision as of March 31, 2026. Ukraine follows with 130,946 pending cases, and El Salvador comes third at 104,729. Together, these three countries represent roughly 99 percent of the entire pending TPS backlog.
Employers who have hired TPS beneficiaries are also directly affected, because those individuals’ work authorization depends on active TPS status and the timely processing of re-registration applications. HR professionals managing I-9 compliance for TPS employees need to track both automatic extension notices and actual approval timelines carefully. Immigration attorneys managing TPS portfolios feel the caseload data most acutely in advising clients on when to expect decisions and how to document continued work authorization during pending periods.
Nationals of countries with smaller or suppressed caseloads — including Burma, Ethiopia, Honduras, Somalia, and Yemen — face a different kind of uncertainty: the suppression of their specific figures makes it harder to assess their relative position in the queue or draw conclusions about processing trends.
Practical Implications
A pending caseload of 574,448 applications at the midpoint of FY2026 signals that even with approvals running well ahead of new receipts, the agency faces a long runway to work through existing filings. For Haitian TPS registrants in particular, the sheer volume of pending cases — more than 332,000 — means that any disruption to adjudication throughput has an outsized effect on the largest single national group in the program.
For Ukrainian nationals, where 130,946 cases remain pending despite 9,481 approvals in just the first half of the fiscal year, the pace of processing is meaningful but the caseload remains large. Practitioners advising Ukrainian clients should account for the possibility that adjudications will continue through the remainder of FY2026 and potentially beyond, depending on staffing and operational conditions at USCIS.
One area where the data raises practical questions it cannot answer on its own is work authorization continuity. USCIS regulations generally provide automatic extension of employment authorization documents for TPS beneficiaries who timely re-register, but those protections are tied to active country designations and specific federal register notices. Given the current policy environment surrounding TPS designations for several countries — including ongoing litigation affecting multiple national groups — individuals and employers alike should be monitoring both adjudication data and any changes to underlying country designations simultaneously.
The denial figures are also worth noting. Over the two reported quarters, 1,884 applications were denied. While this represents a small fraction of overall volume, denials in TPS carry serious consequences, as they can expose individuals to removal proceedings if no other immigration status applies. Anyone who receives a denial notice should treat it as time-sensitive and seek qualified legal review promptly.
What to Watch For Next
USCIS will publish FY2026 Q3 data covering the period from April 1 through June 30, 2026, which will show whether the approvals-over-receipts trend from the first half of the fiscal year continued to reduce the overall pending caseload. Stakeholders should also monitor the Federal Register for any changes to TPS country designations — extensions, terminations, or new designations — that would directly affect registration windows and the applicant population eligible to file. Court decisions affecting specific country designations, particularly for Haiti and Venezuela, have the potential to alter both eligibility and volume significantly during the remainder of the fiscal year.
How Immigration Professional Association Can Help
Immigration Professional Association works with TPS beneficiaries, their families, and the employers who rely on them — and the complexity visible in this data is exactly why professional guidance matters. For Haitian, Ukrainian, and El Salvadoran nationals with applications in a pending caseload this large, understanding where a file stands, whether automatic extension protections apply, and how to respond to a request for evidence or a denial notice requires more than a reading of the statistics.
For employers, IPA’s experience with I-9 compliance in TPS-heavy workforces means we understand how to document continued work authorization during long adjudication periods — and how to respond when a TPS employee’s status becomes uncertain due to litigation or a change in country designation. Our team monitors TPS country designation updates and related federal register notices as they happen, so clients do not have to.
If you or someone in your workforce is navigating a pending TPS application, a recent denial, or uncertainty about work authorization during a re-registration period, Immigration Professional Association is ready to help. Contact our office to discuss your specific TPS situation and understand your options in light of the current processing environment.
