Madrid/Permanent residency approvals under the Cuban Adjustment Act plummeted to just 139 between April and June 2026, during the Donald Trump Administration, compared to the 49,965 registered in the same quarter of 2024, when Joe Biden governed. According to the official data According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the drop was 99.72% in two years.
The proportion of accepted requests among those that were resolved also suffered a turnaround. In the second quarter of 2024 it was 98.7%, compared to 93.2% in 2025 and only 23.7% in 2026. In this last period, USCIS rejected 447 files, more than three out of every four decisions made.
In the second quarter of 2026, USCIS rejected 447 files, more than three out of every four decisions made
The deterioration has accelerated this year. Between January and March 2026, the approval rate was still 52.6%, with 50 applications accepted and 45 denied. Three months later it had fallen almost 29 percentage points.
The figures correspond specifically to the adjustment of status applications under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows certain Cubans to obtain green card (permanent resident card) after meeting the legal requirements to enter and remain in the United States. They do not include all the means by which a citizen of the Island can access residence.
A Cato Institute studysigned by David Bier –its director of Immigration Studies– in April 2026, now had warned of a 99.8% drop in monthly approvals. The analysis, also based on USCIS statistics, indicated that concessions, which were around 10,000 in October 2024, had been reduced to a few dozen per month.
In January 2026, only 15 approvals were registered, coinciding with the paralysis of decisions on residency applications and work permits imposed by USCIS.
In January 2026, only 15 approvals were registered. The figure coincided with the paralysis of decisions on applications for residency, work permits and other immigration benefits that USCIS imposed on December 2, 2025 on citizens of 19 countries, including Cuba, and expanded in January 2026. The suspension was lifted on June 5. by a federal judge in Rhode Island, considering illegal the measures that remained without response the files of citizens of 39 countries. This pause helps explain the collapse in approvals, although statistics do not allow its impact to be measured separately.
The collapse in concessions does not mean, however, that the absolute number of denials has increased. Between April and June 2024 there were 662 rejections, compared to 757 in the same quarter of 2025 and 447 in 2026. What has changed drastically is its proportion within a much smaller volume of decisions.
From the 50,627 files resolved in the second quarter of 2024, the number rose to 11,189 a year later and to only 586 in 2026, a reduction of 98.8% in two years.
In June 2026, the number of unanswered requests rose to 342,360, an increase of 135% compared to 2024
Meanwhile, the backlog of unanswered requests continues to grow. At the end of June 2024, USCIS had 145,707 pending files in the Cuban category. A year later there were 277,836 and, in June 2026, the figure had risen to 342,360, an increase of 135% compared to 2024.
The intake of new applications has also been reduced. Between April and June 2025, 72,541 files were submitted, but in the same period of 2026 there were 6,279, a decrease of 91.3%.
The drop in the Cuban category contrasts with the evolution of other ways to obtain permanent residence. According to USCIS quarterly statistics, between January-March and April-June 2026 the approval rate based on family ties fell from 86% to 81.7%, while that corresponding to employment-based applications went from 93.9% to 93%.
Approval rates for family ties and employment-based applications barely decreased in 2026, USCIS figures show
The Cato Institute has linked the paralysis of the procedures with the restrictions adopted by the Trump Administration. In February 2025, USCIS suspended immigration procedures for people who had entered through the immigration programs. parole humanitarian for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
Bier maintains that the interruption of regularization pathways facilitates the arrests and deportations of people who are still waiting for a decision on their legal status. Their study also documented a 463% increase in arrests of Cubans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
