VAWA Backlog Hits Record: What Abuse Survivors Should Know

Nearly 200,000 people are waiting for the federal government to decide whether they qualify for protection under a law designed to help domestic abuse survivors.

The pile of pending VAWA cases is the largest on record at 194,452 as of Sept. 2025, based on the latest U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data. The backlog has also grown every year for more than a decade.

If you file a petition under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), you can expect to wait up to four years for a response in most cases.

The VAWA self-petition backlog reaches a record high

A VAWA self-petition is a federal application that allows survivors of domestic abuse to seek a Green Card on their own, without the knowledge or cooperation of their abuser.

In 2021, USCIS received roughly 23,000 of these petitions. By 2024, that number had climbed to 70,000.

Approvals didn’t keep pace. The gap between petitions received and decisions has grown wider each year, with the agency generally approving between 7,000 and 12,000 petitions annually.

Source: USCIS Office of Performance and Quality

To address the backlog, USCIS created a dedicated processing unit in 2023 called the HART Servicing Center, short for Humanitarian, Adjustment, Removing Conditions, and Travel Documents. It was designed to handle humanitarian cases, including VAWA petitions.

But the backlog kept growing, and the pace of adjudications hasn’t kept up with the volume of incoming cases. By the end of Fiscal Year 2025, 194,452 petitions were pending, nearly 50 times more than in 2014.

Is VAWA petition volume slowing?

There was a sharp drop in petitions overall last year. In the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, USCIS tracked only 3,367 petitions received, down from 18,158 in the prior quarter.

This may partly reflect a growing USCIS frontlog. The frontlog, which measures cases received but not yet entered into the tracking system, grew from 60,171 at the end of Q3 to 247,974 at the end of Q4. But it’s important to note that this covers all USCIS forms, not I-360 petitions alone.

Fear may also be a factor. 

“People are afraid to expose themselves to immigration authorities, especially if they don’t have legal status,” said Gabriela Urizar, an immigration attorney at Manifest Law.

Who is filing VAWA self-petitions?

VAWA self-petitions cover three groups: spouses, children, and parents of abusive U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Historically, abused spouses made up the majority of applicants. But that’s changed, especially in the parent category.

There were only 356 pending VAWA petitions in the parent category in 2017. By the end of Fiscal Year 2025, there were 83,291 parent petitions sitting unresolved.

USCIS noted a 2,239% increase in parent petitions from Fiscal Year 2020 to 2024. Male self-petitioners also increased by 259% over the same period. 

“There are legitimate reasons why these numbers may have grown,” Urizar said. “There is more awareness today about domestic violence against men, and less stigma around coming forward.”

The agency has pointed to fraud convictions and suspected misuse as contributing factors and in December, updated its policy guidance to tighten evidentiary standards.

However, Urizar notes that USCIS has not released data or case-level evidence publicly documenting the scope of the fraud it describes. 

“The government has not provided evidence to support the scale of fraud they are implying,” she said.

In the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, which ended in September before the updated guidance, USCIS denied 1,327 VAWA petitions and approved 1,159. That’s the first quarter on record in which denials came so close to outpacing approvals.

How long is the VAWA backlog?

According to USCIS reporting, processing times for Form I-360 VAWA self-petitions take up to 47.5 months for 80% of cases. That’s nearly four years from when you file to the date USCIS issues a decision.

This can put you in a legal limbo. Work authorization doesn’t come automatically with a pending VAWA petition. Whether you can apply for a work permit depends on your specific situation, including your relationship to the abuser and whether your priority date is current. An attorney can help determine the earliest point at which you may be eligible.

Case status information is also limited. Federal law restricts what USCIS can share about VAWA cases. This protection is designed to keep abusers from tracking a survivor’s case. But it also means petitioners often have little visibility into where their case stands.