Adjustment of Status Interview Prep in 2026

The adjustment-of-status interview, for most of the last decade, was a formality. For employment-based filers, it was often skipped entirely. For marriage-based filers, it was a tightly scripted half-hour focused on a narrow set of “stock” questions about how the couple met, where they lived, and whose name was on the lease.

That world is over.

Since the December 2025 country-based adjudication pauses and the May 21 USCIS memo redefining adjustment as “extraordinary” discretionary relief, USCIS officers are interviewing almost every I-485 applicant — including employment-based ones — and asking pointedly harder questions. The interview is no longer a procedural box-check. It is, in many cases, where the case gets decided.

A recurring point of friction at recent interviews is whether an applicant remains in lawful status while an I-485 is pending. Officers — taking guidance some attorneys have called incorrect — have been pressing applicants to concede they are “out of status” if their underlying I-94 period of admission has expired during the pendency of the adjustment application.

The statute and the regulations say otherwise. 8 C.F.R. § 245.1 and 8 C.F.R. § 274a.12(c)(9) authorize an adjustment applicant to remain in the United States and accrue authorized stay while the I-485 is pending, provided it was timely and properly filed. The USCIS Policy Manual itself, in Volume 7, confirms this framework.

What attorneys are advising clients to say, if pressed:

• “I was in status when I filed.” The relevant question for the statutory bars under INA § 245(c) is the applicant’s status at the time of filing, not after.
• “I remain in a period of authorized stay.” The pendency of the I-485 itself confers authorized presence — distinct from “nonimmigrant status,” which can lapse.
• “My I-94 is expired, but my filing is not.” The I-94 admission period and the I-485 pendency are different legal concepts. An expired I-94 alone does not put a properly filed adjustment applicant out of status for adjustment purposes.

For unrepresented applicants, the temptation to agree with the officer’s characterization can be strong. Practitioners recommend bringing an attorney to any interview where the question of timing is even arguably contested.

A separate, older trap: the State Department’s 90-day rule for misrepresentation. Found in 9 FAM 302.9-4(B)(3), the rule creates a presumption that an applicant who engaged in conduct inconsistent with their visa’s stated purpose within 90 days of entry — for example, marrying a U.S. citizen or filing for adjustment of status — made a willful misrepresentation at entry.

USCIS does not formally adopt the 90-day rule for adjustment adjudications, but officers routinely treat the short period between entry and life-changing conduct as a red flag. The shorter the window, the bigger the flag.

The risk is sharpest in two patterns:

• Marriage to a U.S. citizen within 30 to 60 days of entry on a visit visa, followed by an I-130/I-485 filing.
• Change of status from B-1/B-2 to F-1 within weeks of entry, even if the application is otherwise valid.

The defense, in any case where the timing is close, is documentation of intent at the moment of entry — and, where conduct happened quickly, an explanation grounded in changed circumstances after entry.

In practice, contemporaneous documentary evidence is the answer: employer communications, financial records, family correspondence — any written trail that shows the precipitating event happened after entry rather than before.

The new “why didn’t you consular-process?” question

The May 21 USCIS policy memorandum (PM-602-0199) instructs officers to weigh whether consular processing of an immigrant visa abroad would have been the more “regular” path for the applicant.

The result is a question officers now ask routinely, in some form:

“Why did you apply for adjustment here in the United States? Why didn’t you just consular-process like everybody else?”

There is no single correct answer. There are, however, defensible ones — and they vary by category.

For marriage-based applicants, the answer typically centers on statutory eligibility plus practical realities of married life: family unification, continued employment in the United States, and the disruption of being separated from a U.S.-citizen spouse and U.S.-citizen children during a multi-month consular process.

For K-1 fiancé(e) and K-2 derivative applicants, the answer is statutory: INA § 245(d) requires K-status adjustment from within the United States after the qualifying marriage. There is no consular-processing alternative for them once they entered on a K visa.

For employment-based applicants, the answer combines statutory eligibility (INA § 245(a) and (k)), continued employment with the sponsoring employer, the practical impossibility of leaving the United States while the I-140 portability provisions of AC21 apply, and the risk of triggering the 3- and 10-year unlawful-presence bars under INA § 212(a)(9)(B) for any prior accrued unlawful presence.

The point is to have a real answer — sourced in statute and in personal fact — rather than a deflection.

Officers reviewing marriage-based I-485 cases are asking for more documentation depth than they were even a year ago. The thin packet of joint lease, shared bank statement, and a few photos that used to satisfy the bona-fide-marriage requirement does not, in current practice, hold up.

What attorneys are recommending applicants assemble:

• Joint financial life: joint bank statements covering at least 12 months, joint credit cards, jointly filed tax returns (or Married-Filing-Separately returns reflecting the marriage), shared insurance policies.
• Joint physical life: joint lease or mortgage, joint utility bills (electricity, internet, water), joint driver’s-license addresses, joint mailing address on financial accounts.
• Joint social life: dated photographs covering the relationship, not just the wedding; affidavits from family and friends with contact information; travel records together.
• Joint communication: dated message logs, call records, correspondence demonstrating contact over time.
• Documentation of any complicated facts: prior marriages, child custody, immigration history of both spouses.

In current practice, three binders of evidence is not unusual for a marriage-based interview.

Where the marriage timeline is short or the documentary record thin, applicants should expect a post-interview Stokes-style second interview — separate questioning of each spouse — or a USCIS site visit to the marital residence.

A separate problem has emerged after the interview: silence. Applicants who completed I-485 interviews months ago, with verbal indications of approval, are still waiting for decisions. The May 21 memo and the December 2025 country-based pauses both contribute to the slow-walk.

The USCIS Customer Service Guide commits the agency to a 60-day post-interview decision turnaround. In current practice, that commitment is routinely missed.

Practical options for applicants stuck in post-interview limbo:

• Mandamus action in federal district court under 28 U.S.C. § 1361 — appropriate where USCIS has unreasonably delayed action on a duty it owes.
• Inclusion as a plaintiff in pending APA challenges to either the December 2025 pauses or the May 21 memo — where the applicant’s case falls within the policy’s reach.
• Service request through the USCIS contact center, escalated to a Tier 2 representative — useful for record-correction but rarely sufficient on its own.
• Congressional inquiry through the applicant’s U.S. House representative — slow, but sometimes effective at the field-office level.