N-400 Processing Index: naturalization backlogs and denial rates at every USCIS field office
How long the queue is at each of the 93 USCIS field offices that decide naturalization cases, and how often each one says no. Built from the quarterly case data USCIS publishes, and from nothing else.
What changed this quarter
In the April to June 2026 quarter, USCIS approved 57,697 naturalization applications. In the same quarter a year earlier it approved 241,326. That is a fall of 76%. New applications also fell: 145,872 were received in the quarter, against 251,467 a year earlier, a fall of 42%. Approvals fell by more than receipts did.
The slowdown is not confined to a few offices. Approvals fell at 57 of the 70 field offices large enough to compare against the previous quarter. The denial rate rose at 70 of 74 rated offices against the same quarter last year. Cases waiting for a decision reached 742,138, the highest in the eleven quarters of data we hold.
What else happened around this quarter. Two documented events sit in or around it. They are listed here with their dates because a reader deserves to know they exist, and for no other reason: nothing below is offered as an explanation of the numbers above.
- 5 June 2026A federal court vacated both hold memorandaThe U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, vacated PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194 and Policy Alert PA 2025-26. Final judgment followed on 11 June 2026. USCIS said it disagrees with the order and will follow its terms pending possible further review. It fell in the last four weeks of this quarter.
- 24 August 2026A second federal court enjoined both memorandaafter this quarter ended, so not in these numbersThe U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in Red Eagle Law v. Edlow, enjoined PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0194, directed USCIS to adjudicate affected applications in the normal course, and certified a class of affected applicants. USCIS said it disagrees and will follow the order pending possible further review.
What this does not tell you. The case data USCIS publishes records counts only. It cannot attribute the movement in these numbers among these events, or to anything else, and this index does not try to. USCIS publishes no nationality breakdown by field office, so the country lists in those memoranda cannot be matched against any office's caseload from published data. We report the movement and leave the cause open, because the data does not settle it.
What the numbers say
Fewer applications approved than in the same quarter a year earlier, 57,697 against 241,326. Receipts were 145,872, against 251,467 (down 42%). Approvals fell at 57 of 70 comparable offices, so this is not a few places dragging an average.
It decided 408 cases in the quarter, against an average of 4,420 over the eleven quarters we hold. Its queue is 51.2 quarters long. The queue is a ratio, so it lengthens when decisions fall as well as when cases pile up; read the note on its page for which this was.
Queens denied 706 of 1,533 cases it decided. Nationally the figure was 18.2%. It clears our 200-case bar only narrowly, on 1,533 decisions, so its rate moves far more easily than a large office's and should be read with that in mind.
Full ranking
All 93 field offices. 74 are rated: they completed at least 200 cases in the quarter, which is enough for a rate to mean something. The rest are shown with their case counts and no rate.
| Field office | State | Queuequarters of work | Denial rateof cases decided | Waitingcases pending | Queue vs 1 yr agochange in quarters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Jose | California | 51.2 | 22.3% | 20,899 | +50.2 |
| San Francisco | California | 46.4 | 15.9% | 18,645 | +44.6 |
| Baltimore | Maryland | 42.8 | 35.0% | 16,716 | +40.6 |
| Seattle | Washington | 29.5 | 27.1% | 18,384 | +27.6 |
| Sacramento | California | 25.0 | 23.2% | 15,918 | +21.9 |
| Fresno | California | 24.6 | 22.0% | 9,722 | +22.3 |
| St. Paul | Minnesota | 24.2 | 25.5% | 11,279 | +22.4 |
| Portland | Oregon | 22.0 | 10.0% | 8,599 | +20.2 |
| Los Angeles | California | 21.8 | 18.8% | 11,703 | +19.9 |
| Raleigh | North Carolina | 20.9 | 9.8% | 7,901 | +18.9 |
| Chicago | Illinois | 19.3 | 22.8% | 23,623 | +17.4 |
| Las Vegas | Nevada | 17.1 | 19.0% | 8,230 | +15.2 |
| Harlingen | Texas | 15.7 | 29.9% | 3,359 | +14.0 |
| San Bernardino | California | 14.3 | 21.6% | 12,397 | +12.5 |
| Boston | Massachusetts | 14.0 | 7.9% | 17,385 | +12.2 |
| Kansas City | Missouri | 13.4 | 19.2% | 5,174 | +11.0 |
| Atlanta | Georgia | 13.1 | 19.6% | 17,300 | +10.6 |
| San Diego | California | 13.1 | 19.8% | 12,567 | +11.3 |
| Santa Ana | California | 12.7 | 8.5% | 14,054 | +9.8 |
| Montgomery | Alabama | 12.5 | 7.5% | 5,043 | +10.4 |
| Indianapolis | Indiana | 12.5 | 10.8% | 7,616 | +10.4 |
| Honolulu | Hawaii | 12.5 | 7.6% | 3,788 | +9.2 |
| Philadelphia | Pennsylvania | 12.1 | 19.6% | 17,912 | +10.3 |
| Tampa | Florida | 12.0 | 14.5% | 16,330 | +9.2 |
| San Antonio | Texas | 11.6 | 6.8% | 18,999 | +9.8 |
Offices completing fewer than 200 cases in the quarter are marked not rated: their case numbers are shown, but a rate built on so few decisions would move several points on a single case, so no rate is given. Queue is cases waiting divided by cases decided in the quarter.
Cases decided per quarter, by field office
Eleven quarters, FY2024 Q1 to FY2026 Q3. Each tile is one office, scaled to its own history, so the shape shows whether that office changed. Sorted by steepness of decline. Read the last column in each tile against the ten before it.
Prior eight quarters Current quarter, where approvals fell 25% or more. An office that sped up is not marked in red.
Source: USCIS quarterly N-400 case data · citizen-pass.com/us/n400-processing-index
74 of 93 field offices. The 19 that completed fewer than 200 cases in the quarter are not rated and are excluded here, exactly as they are from the rates in the table above. Outlined tiles are offices whose output moved more than 50% in a single quarter; each links to the note on its page.
How this is built
The queue figure is the number of cases waiting for a decision divided by the number of cases the office decided in the quarter. If an office has 8,000 cases pending and decided 2,000 last quarter, it has four quarters of work queued. It describes the office, not your case.
The denial rate is denials divided by the cases the office decided in the quarter, approvals plus denials. It is not a civics-test pass rate. USCIS does not publish a test pass rate by office or by state, so this index does not show one. Most denials turn on eligibility, residence, or good moral character rather than on the test.
Rates are withheld from small offices. Below 200 completed cases in a quarter, one decision can move a rate by several points. Those offices keep their counts and lose their rate rather than being quietly dropped.
None of this is under an applicant's control. The civics test is the part that is: unlike the case data, the questions are fully published, and every official one of them is in our free US citizenship test practice.
Comparisons run year over year, quarter against the same quarter twelve months earlier, because naturalization receipts are strongly seasonal.
We describe what the published case data shows. We do not predict individual outcomes, and no figure on this page is a forecast of how any particular application will be decided. The whole dataset is free to download and reuse: CSV or JSON.
Sources, data notes and caveats
Where the numbers come from
- USCIS, Number of Form N-400 Applications for Naturalization by Category of Naturalization, Case Status, and USCIS Field OfficeThe eleven quarterly workbooks are committed in data/raw/. Direct file URLs are listed per quarter below.
- DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Table 23: Persons Naturalized by State or Territory of ResidencePublished June 2026. Counts are rounded to the nearest 10 by the publisher. This counts people who COMPLETED naturalization and is a different measure from the N-400 case actions above.
- USCIS Historical Processing Times factsheet, FY2016 to FY2024This is a CYCLE-TIME median. USCIS states it is not comparable to the 80th-percentile figures shown on the live processing-times tool. The two must never be plotted on one axis.
- USCIS Case Processing Times toolNOT used as an input to this index. Recorded here because it is the figure most readers arrive with. It publishes only the 80th percentile (80% of cases completed within N months), never a median, and USCIS keeps no public history of it. See scripts/wait-times/ for the forward-looking capture.
- USCIS, 2025 Civics TestN-400 filed before 20 October 2025: 2008 test, up to 10 of 100 questions, 6 to pass. Filed on or after: 2025 test, 20 of 128 questions, 12 to pass.
- USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0192, Hold and Review of All Pending Asylum Applications and All USCIS Benefits Filed by Aliens from High-Risk CountriesDated INSIDE the reported quarter, in its final month. Vacated by court order on 5 June 2026 (see uscis-court-order-hold-policies). Recorded here as a dated event only: nothing in the published case data attributes any movement in the counts to it.
- USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194, Hold and Review of USCIS Benefit Applications Filed by Aliens From Additional High-Risk CountriesTakes effect AFTER the reported quarter ends on 31 December 2025, so it cannot be in these numbers. Recorded so a reader is not left thinking it is. Vacated by court order on 5 June 2026.
- USCIS, Court Order on Hold PoliciesThe current legal status of both memoranda. It does not change the case counts for the quarter, which are as published in the workbook.
- USCIS, Recent Court Order on Hold PoliciesA dated event AFTER the FY2026 Q3 quarter ended, listed so nobody reads it into those numbers. It does not change the case counts, which are as published in the workbook.
- Naturalization ceremony cancellations, late November and December 2025: congressional correspondence and contemporaneous press reportingA dated event inside the quarter. USCIS publishes no count of cancelled ceremonies, so the scale of this cannot be quantified from any public data, and it is not quantified here.
- USCIS Naturalization Test PerformanceNo per-office or per-state pass rate is published anywhere. No pass-rate data exists yet for the 2025 test version. This index therefore reports no pass rates at office or state level.
What these numbers do and do not mean
- This measures cases, not tests. Nothing here is a civics-test pass rate. USCIS publishes no pass rate by field office or by state, and none is estimated on this page. Most denials turn on eligibility, continuous residence, or good moral character rather than on the test.
- The queue figure is a description of an office, not a prediction about you. It is cases waiting divided by cases decided in the quarter, so it reads as quarters of work already queued at the office's current rate of work. Your own case can be faster or slower for reasons that have nothing to do with the size of the queue.
- Small offices are not rated. Below 200 completed cases in the quarter, a single decision can swing a rate by several points, so we publish the counts and withhold the rate.
- Suppressed cells. USCIS replaces small counts with a “D” to avoid disclosing individuals. We carry those through as unknown, never as zero, which is why a few offices have counts but no rate.
- Two processing-time measures exist and they are not comparable. The USCIS processing-times tool publishes an 80th percentile, meaning 80% of cases finish within that many months. The historical factsheet publishes a median on a different, cycle-time basis. USCIS states these should not be compared. We keep them apart, and neither one feeds the queue figure. We last checked the USCIS 80th-percentile figures on October 9, 2026; USCIS overwrites them in place and revises often, so treat them as a dated snapshot.
- Pending is not a running total. USCIS states that some case actions are not reflected across reporting periods, so a quarter's pending count cannot be reconstructed by adding receipts to, and subtracting completions from, the quarter before.
- Figures get restated. USCIS revises earlier quarters without notice. Every number here is as published in the most recent workbook listed above.
All sources last verified October 2026. Spot an error? Tell us and we will check it against the source.