The DV-2026 Hold Is Vacated. Selectees Have Until September 30.

What August 28 changed

On August 28, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order in Medani, et al. v. Trump, et al. (case 26-cv-6332) that temporarily vacated USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0193. That memo — issued on December 19, 2025 — had placed an indefinite hold on all pending Diversity Visa adjustment-of-status applications in the United States, citing the need to fully assess national security and public safety grounds of inadmissibility.

The court ordered USCIS, in language quoted in the USCIS notice, to take all reasonable steps during the remainder of the Diversity Visa fiscal year to resume ordinary adjudication of pending adjustment of status applications without applying PM-602-0193. For DV-2026 selectees inside the United States whose I-485 applications had been sitting frozen since December, that language means USCIS is now court-ordered to process those cases. Not at its discretion — required by a federal judge.

The court also certified a nationwide subclass covering all FY-2026 Diversity Visa selectees and their derivative beneficiaries subject to the USCIS DV hold. Class certification is what converts this from a ruling affecting only named plaintiffs into a class-wide injunction. If your I-485 was held under PM-602-0193, you are in that class.

What PM-602-0193 was

USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0193 on December 19, 2025, directing agency personnel to place an indefinite hold on all diversity-based adjustment applications. The stated rationale was the need to fully assess national, criminal, and related grounds of inadmissibility for Diversity Visa applicants — essentially a vetting hold imposed at the agency level, without individual case review and without notice to affected applicants about when or whether their case would resume.

In practice, the hold froze DV-2026 adjustment-of-status cases entirely. Applicants who had already filed their I-485 received no interview notices, no Requests for Evidence, no requests for additional information, and no final decisions. Cases that had been moving through the pipeline stopped completely. Applications for derivative benefits tied to a pending I-485 — the Employment Authorization Document and Advance Parole — were blocked at the same time as the underlying application.

The Diversity Visa program operates on fiscal years that run October 1 through September 30. The program allocates up to 55,000 visas per year. Any visa number not issued by September 30 is forfeited — it cannot be carried forward to the next fiscal year. When USCIS issued PM-602-0193 in December 2025, it guaranteed that a large number of DV-2026 selectees would lose their visa allocation not to a legal inadmissibility finding but to a processing hold — and that loss would be permanent once September 30 arrived.

The State Department had its own separate pause

While USCIS held adjustment-of-status applications inside the United States, the State Department was running a parallel pause at consulates abroad. On January 14, 2026, DOS announced an indefinite pause in immigrant visa processing for nationals of 75 countries. This action affected DV-2026 selectees pursuing their visas through consular processing outside the United States — a different population from those adjusting status inside the US.

The Medani court order addressed both sides of the DV hold simultaneously. The August 28 ruling certified separate nationwide classes for DV selectees subject to the DOS consular processing pause and those from countries covered by the 75-country pause. The combined effect was court-ordered relief on both the domestic adjustment-of-status track and the overseas consular track at the same time.

Whether consulates can actually schedule and complete immigrant visa interviews before September 30 is a practical question the court order cannot fully answer. Courts remove legal barriers — they cannot create appointment slots at backed-up embassies overnight. What the order does is restore the legal obligation to process on both tracks. How quickly that translates into completed adjudications depends on agency capacity and resource allocation decisions made in the next three weeks.

The August 24 orders — PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0194

Four days before the Medani ruling, the same Northern District of California court issued a related order on August 24, 2026. That order enjoined two other USCIS policy memoranda: PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0194. Those memos had directed USCIS to place adjudicative holds on immigration benefit applications for nationals of countries designated under presidential proclamations as presenting elevated national security risks — a broader hold framework than the DV-specific PM-602-0193.

PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0194 had already faced legal challenges earlier this year. A separate April 27 ruling from the District of Maryland granted preliminary injunctions protecting 83 named plaintiffs — but that order applied only to those specific individuals. The August 24 NDCA order went further, certifying nationwide classes and extending the injunction to the full class.

Together, the August 24 and August 28 orders represent a substantial judicial response to USCIS's hold-based approach to immigration adjudication in 2026. Three policy memoranda that placed specific applicant categories on indefinite hold — PM-602-0192, PM-602-0193, and PM-602-0194 — are now either enjoined or vacated through class-wide court orders. For DV-2026 applicants, the August 28 vacatur of PM-602-0193 is the directly relevant order.

September 30 is twenty-one days away

The court issued its order on August 28, when FY2026 had 33 days remaining. As of today, September 9, 2026, there are 21 days left. The statutory deadline for FY2026 Diversity Visas is September 30 at midnight. That is not a preference, not a procedural convention, and not a date that can be moved by court order. It is the date written into immigration law. Visa numbers not issued by September 30 expire. They do not roll over. There is no mechanism to extend FY2026 DV allocations into FY2027.

This is the core tension in the situation. The court has ordered USCIS to act in good faith and take reasonable steps to adjudicate DV-2026 AOS cases before the fiscal year closes. 'Practicable' and 'good faith' are not the same as a guarantee that every paused case gets decided in time. USCIS has a large backlog of cases frozen since December, limited interview capacity at domestic field offices, and 21 days. The words 'reasonable steps' leave USCIS with discretion the court cannot fully eliminate.

How many of those cases make it through to approved I-485 decisions before September 30 depends on choices USCIS makes — staffing assignments, interview scheduling priorities, how aggressively the agency pursues compliance with the order. Those are operational decisions, not outcomes the court has specified beyond 'reasonable steps' and 'good faith.'

What DV-2026 selectees in the US need to do right now

If you are a DV-2026 selectee with a pending I-485 that was held under PM-602-0193, check your USCIS case status now. The court order removes the legal basis for the hold. Your I-485 is not automatically approved — the agency still has to adjudicate it — but it is back in the queue eligible for action. An interview notice is what should come next for an AOS case that has completed earlier stages.

Contact your immigration attorney immediately if you have one. For DV AOS cases with paused applications, the practical question is whether USCIS will schedule interviews before September 30 or whether those cases slip past the fiscal year deadline. Immigration attorneys who handle DV cases are following this closely and may have real-time information about how local USCIS field offices are responding to the court order.

If you have pending I-765 or I-131 applications tied to the paused I-485, those should also be eligible to move again. The hold on an underlying I-485 typically blocks derivative benefit applications as well. With PM-602-0193 vacated, both the core I-485 and the derivative EAD and Advance Parole applications are back in the adjudicable queue.

USCIS disagrees — and that matters

USCIS's public statement on the August 28 order included this language: USCIS 'strongly disagrees with the Court's order but will follow its terms pending possible further judicial review.' The phrase 'pending possible further judicial review' is the operative part. It means DHS is actively considering an appeal — potentially a motion to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency stay of the district court order, or another appellate challenge.

If DHS obtains a stay before September 30, the effect would be to suspend the district court order while the appeal proceeds — which could allow PM-602-0193 to be reinstated and the hold reimposed before the fiscal year ends. That outcome is not guaranteed, but it is not theoretical. The Trump administration has sought emergency stays of district court immigration orders on multiple occasions since January 2025, with results that vary depending on the court and the legal question presented.

As of September 9, no stay has been issued. The August 28 order is in effect and USCIS is obligated to comply. But the 'strongly disagrees' language tells you this is not settled. DV-2026 selectees relying on this order to get their cases processed should have an attorney who can monitor for any appellate action that changes the order's status — because with only 21 days to September 30, a stay that arrives on September 15 is nearly as damaging as no order at all.

What's easy to miss in all of this

The coverage of the court order focuses on whether USCIS will comply. That is a real question. But for most affected DV-2026 selectees, the harder constraint is not the legal question — it is the calendar.

DV-2026 selectees whose I-485 applications were paused by PM-602-0193 have had nine months of their fiscal year window consumed by a policy hold that a federal court has now found unlawful. Those nine months cannot be recovered. The court can order USCIS to act now. It cannot restore the time the hold already took.

What selectees in the DV-2026 queue need to understand — whether pursuing adjustment inside the US or immigrant visa processing abroad — is that the next 21 days are operational reality, not theory. Cases that do not clear adjudication by September 30 lose their visa allocation. The September 2026 Visa Bulletin confirms September 30, 2026 as the end of the DV-2026 entitlement period. For a selectee who entered the lottery, was selected out of millions of applicants, waited through processing, filed their application, and then had nine months taken by an agency hold — losing the visa to a September 30 cutoff is not an abstract legal outcome. It is the specific thing they were waiting for, gone.

This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. The Medani v. Trump litigation is ongoing, and court orders can change through stay applications and appeals with very limited notice. The September 30, 2026 deadline is set by statute and will not move. Always verify current case status at uscis.gov and consult a licensed immigration attorney before relying on this article for any filing or legal decision.