The Trump administration has removed special protections that spouses of U.S. citizens used to have in the immigration system. Now they face the same rules and enforcement actions as other immigrants without legal status.

NPR reported on July 6, 2026 that the changes include stopping new visas for people from 75 countries, asking harder questions during immigration interviews, and putting spouses with pending applications on the list for possible deportation. A USCIS official, Zach Kahler, told NPR that the agency needs to check everyone's identity and background more thoroughly.

For a long time, spouses of U.S. citizens got treated differently than other immigrants. They didn't have to follow the same country-by-country visa limits, and they could adjust their status even if they hadn't always been in the country legally. That special treatment is now gone.

How This Happened

USCIS made these changes step by step over the past year. In October 2025, the agency sent instructions telling officers to look more carefully at whether marriages are real and legally valid. On January 1, 2026, a new policy applied the same extra scrutiny to spousal cases that the agency already used for other types of immigration applications.

Kahler said something important to NPR: having a pending spousal petition form (Form I-130) doesn't protect you from being deported. Courts have always said this is true legally. But for years, immigration officials used their judgment to avoid deporting people whose applications were pending. Now the administration is saying they won't do that anymore.

A court case called Matter of Jin added another layer to the change. Lawyers who work with immigrants criticized that decision for assuming fraud without strong proof. In June 2026, a federal court in Rhode Island issued an order about USCIS screening practices, and USCIS published an update about its new approach.

Who This Affects

Millions of people are affected. An organization called American Families United, which helps U.S. citizens married to immigrants, said about 1.4 million people inside the United States and around 300,000 abroad are seeking help, according to NPR. The group has found cases where noncitizen spouses left the country on their own rather than stay and risk being detained — even before any official deportation decision.

Lawyers who handle immigration cases say these changes make things worse. The American Immigration Lawyers Association, which represents lawyers in this field, notes that the combination of stopped visas, tougher interviews, and the new position on deportation is creating long delays for families waiting for their cases to be processed.

The administration says earlier presidents should have been stricter with spousal cases and that it is simply following the law. But this overlooks something important: the old way of doing things wasn't required by law, and it wasn't forbidden either. The administration had the legal right to be stricter. The difference is that now it has decided to be stricter with everyone, and it is no longer willing to use its judgment to protect people whose cases are pending.

For lawyers and their clients, the result is clear: if your spousal petition is still being processed, you cannot count on it keeping you safe from deportation.