The Trump administration has ended the special protections that spouses of U.S. citizens historically received in the immigration system, placing them under the same enforcement rules as other noncitizens.

NPR reported on July 6, 2026 that the policy changes include halting immigrant visas for nationals from 75 countries, stricter questioning during adjustment-of-status interviews, and a broader deportation target list that now includes spouses with pending petition applications. USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler confirmed the shift to NPR, saying that verifying the identities and histories of all immigration applicants is necessary to ensure thorough screening and vetting.

For decades, immediate relatives of U.S. citizens — a category that includes spouses — operated under a different set of rules. They weren't subject to country-by-country visa limits and didn't need to maintain continuous legal status to adjust their immigration status. In practice, they held a privileged position. That policy framework is now reversed.

The Policy Record

USCIS built this change through a series of administrative moves over the past year. A policy alert in October 2025 instructed officers to verify that marriages are legally valid and genuine — language that signaled a shift toward greater skepticism during interviews. On January 1, 2026, Policy Memorandum PM-602-0194 extended the same review restrictions applied to other immigration benefits to family-based visa applications for nationals of designated high-risk countries, effectively treating spousal petitions the same as other case types.

Kahler's statement to NPR that a pending or approved Form I-130 — the spousal petition form — offers no legal protection against deportation represents a clear statement of the new approach. Courts have consistently ruled that a filed or approved I-130 is not a legal barrier to removal. But the long-standing practice was to use prosecutorial discretion and avoid removing people with a clear pathway to legal status. The administration is explicitly rejecting that practice.

The Board of Immigration Appeals added a legal dimension earlier this year with its decision in Matter of Jin, a spousal petition appeal that immigration lawyers criticized for relying on marriage-fraud concerns without solid evidence. On June 5, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island issued an order regarding USCIS screening practices, after which USCIS published an update on its screening and vetting approach.

Who Is Affected and How Advocates Are Responding

The number of families affected is substantial. American Families United, which represents U.S. citizen spouses and immediate relatives navigating immigration law, reported roughly 1.4 million people seeking support within the country and about 300,000 outside it as of July 6, according to NPR. The organization's executive director, Ashley DeAzevedo, has documented cases where noncitizen spouses have chosen to leave the country voluntarily rather than risk indefinite detention — a sign that uncertainty about enforcement alone is separating families without formal deportation orders.

Sharvari Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, is monitoring how the policy consolidation affects pending cases. Since AILA's members handle most family-based immigration adjustments and processing work, the combination of visa pauses, tougher interview standards, and the I-130 enforcement clarification creates compounding delays across all three procedural pathways.

The administration argues that prior presidents should have applied the same scrutiny to marriage-based applications and that USCIS is now following the law as written. That framing overlooks the discretionary component: Congress did not require the prior preferential treatment, but it also did not forbid it. The legal authority to strengthen screening standards exists. What has changed is a deliberate decision to apply those standards across the board and to remove the enforcement exception that characterized practice for generations.

For immigration lawyers, the immediate consequence is that no pending I-130 can be treated as a shield against removal. Clients with cases in progress — particularly those from the 75 paused countries — now face a different risk calculation than the one their legal strategy was based on.