USCIS declared SIJS application fee non-waivable, cutting off abused children from congressional immigration protection

On July 22, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published a notice in the Federal Register declaring that the $250 Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) application fee is non-waivable, effective immediately for benefit requests postmarked on or after that date. The agency cited the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1), which mandated payment of a fee for SIJS applicants; USCIS interpreted the mandatory-payment language as barring any waiver, even though the law contained no explicit prohibition on waivers.

SIJS is a humanitarian immigration protection created by Congress in 1990 specifically for immigrant children who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned by a parent and who cannot safely return to their country of origin. The federal government had waived the $250 fee for SIJS applicants for more than three decades, recognizing that the children the program is designed to protect often come from circumstances of poverty and family breakdown. By declaring the fee non-waivable, USCIS effectively made the program financially inaccessible to the most vulnerable children — those without family financial resources — for whom Congress created it.

Updates

2026-07-23 — Advocacy organizations filed federal lawsuit challenging fee waiver removal [2]

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and Legal Services for Children filed suit in federal court challenging USCIS's removal of the SIJS fee waiver as a denial of due process and violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs argued the agency exceeded its statutory authority in treating the fee as non-waivable absent explicit congressional direction and that making the protection financially inaccessible to indigent children conflicts with the congressional intent behind SIJS.