Finalizing applications filed by certain immigrants to become legal permanent residents is being put on hold to comply with an executive order President Donald Trump signed in January.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the part of the Department of Homeland Security that handles citizenship, legal status and other immigration benefits, has suspended processing some applications for so-called green cards to do more vetting of the applicants, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

Trump’s executive order, signed Jan. 20, titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,” called for agencies to “vet and screen to the maximum degree possible all aliens who intend to be admitted, enter, or are already inside the United States, particularly those aliens coming from regions or nations with identified security risks.”

CBS News reported Tuesday that USCIS has directed its staff to conduct the additional vetting of refugees or people who were granted asylum and have applied for legal permanent residency, or green cards.

The agency said in a statement attributed to a DHS spokesperson that it is “placing a temporary pause on finalizing certain adjustment of status applications pending the completion of additional screening and vetting.”

The statement did not address which applications were affected, whether the pause would affect spending at the agency, how long it would last and other questions asked by NBC News.

Vetting on top of vetting

For refugees and those who have been granted asylum in the United States, it would be a vetting on top of a process that had already occurred, one that is quite rigorous for refugees who are usually vetted overseas before they can set foot in the United States.

“There’s a certain amount of documentation you have to provide as a refugee as well as an asylee,” Laura Collins, director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, told NBC News. “All of these people who are approved for resettlement or to remain in the United States, that’s because the United States government already approved them to be here.”

People who are granted asylum or admitted to the United States as refugees must wait one year before they can apply for green cards.

Collins said it remains to be seen how the vetting will be carried out and how long the pause will last. She said that in the first Trump administration, USCIS made sure every single blank on a form was correctly filled out.

“So if you didn’t have a middle name … they would send your application back and say, ‘Well, you didn’t fill in your middle name portion,’” Collins said. She said it’s possible USCIS will check social media, “things they probably already vet, but asking for another set of eyes or a slightly longer look at it.”

Trump took similar steps in his previous presidential term. In his first term, USCIS was directed to go through every application “with a fine-tooth comb,” disrupting agency operations, Collins said.

“In slowing down those applications, because USCIS is fee-funded, if you’re not processing as many applications, you are not taking in as much money, which means you don’t have the capacity to maintain all the contractors and other staff you have, so you start to shrink the agency,” she said. “I don’t know if that is their ultimate goal.”

The Migration Policy Institute reported in 2020 that a drop in the number of applications and an increase in spending on vetting and enforcement were central to the agency’s $1.2 billion shortfall in 2020.

From 2016 to 2020, spending on vetting nearly tripled, from $53 million to $149 million, according to MPI, an immigration think tank that has supported immigration reform that includes enforcement as well as a path to citizenship for people in the country without legal status.

People are also vetted during the process of become legal permanent residents, or what is known as adjusting their status. From the time they’re in the United States through the process of getting green cards, authorities check that they don’t have criminal records or something else that would disqualify them from getting legal permanent residency, she said.

The pauses are being implemented just as USCIS has been making headway in its workload. It said in a report on its website that it reduced its backlog of petitions 15% in 2023, the first time in a decade it had cut its backlog. It decreased again last year, by 11.2%.