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Family & Humanitarian Reporter
Maya Patel covers family-based immigration and humanitarian protections for Docket News. Her reporting includes marriage-based and relative-petition processing, the affirmative asylum backlog, TPS country designations, and the agency capacity questions that drive both.
Before journalism, she worked in immigrant-services nonprofits, where she helped families navigate I-130 filings and TPS re-registration cycles.
An applicant who got her marriage-based green card in April and withdrew her pending affirmative asylum case in May still received a USCIS letter demanding the new asylum filing fee. The fix turns on where she sent the withdrawal — and where she did not.
USCIS is now interviewing nearly every I-485 applicant, including employment-based filers. With the May 21 memo redefining adjustment as 'extraordinary' discretionary relief, what attorneys tell clients about the in-status defense, the 60/90-day fraud presumption, and the questions officers are asking has changed sharply.
Roughly 50,000 people in Kuwait have lost their nationality under Decree-Law No. 116/2024 since the Emir suspended Parliament in May 2024. For those already in the United States, the loss of citizenship triggers U.S. visa revocations — and a narrow set of remaining legal options.