USCIS service centers

USCIS runs five service centers: California, Nebraska, Potomac, Texas and Vermont. They make up the Service Center Operations Directorate (SCOPS), which “consists of five Service Centers that provide immigration benefits for petitioners and applicants who do not require interviews,” according to the SCOPS page (last reviewed July 17, 2026). A sixth office, the National Benefits Center (NBC), appears next to them in USCIS’s I-485 caseload table. The USCIS Contact Us page says the NBC “is not a USCIS Service Center.”

General information, not legal advice. For your specific case, talk to an immigration attorney or an accredited representative.

The six offices compared

The table below lists each center’s receipt-number prefix and the I-485 and I-130 cases pending there on June 30, 2026. Each pending count is followed by its share of the national total.

CenterReceipt prefixPart ofI-485 pendingI-130 pending
Vermont Service CenterEACSCOPS246,100 (15.8%)17,151 (0.7%)
Nebraska Service CenterLINSCOPS42,805 (2.7%)20,388 (0.8%)
California Service CenterWACSCOPS21,108 (1.4%)70,141 (2.9%)
Texas Service CenterSRCSCOPS13,250 (0.8%)20,126 (0.8%)
Potomac Service CenterYSCSCOPS48 (0.0%)12,804 (0.5%)
National Benefits CenterNBC, MSCField Operations Directorate0 (0.0%)12,795 (0.5%)

Together the six rows held 323,311 pending I-485 applications (20.7% of 1,560,290 nationwide) and 153,405 pending I-130 petitions (6.4% of 2,404,546 nationwide) on June 30, 2026. The rest sit in the field-office rows.

Prefixes: USCIS Office of Legislative Affairs, Congressional Inquiries Refresher (April 2021). Caseload: USCIS files for I-485 and I-130, April 1 - June 30, 2026 (FY2026 Q3); read October 19, 2026. The share (rounded half-up to one decimal) is our own arithmetic. In the I-130 file USCIS prints only five rows under "Service Center by State" and places the NBC row in its Missouri block; the six-row I-130 grouping and its combined total are ours.

What a service center does, and how a field office differs

  • Service centers decide cases on paper. USCIS says service centers do not conduct interviews and “are not public-facing” (How Service Centers Work, March 22, 2021). In the same presentation, USCIS says cases can be transferred from service centers to field offices, and back again, “if more evidence or interviews are needed.”
  • SCOPS describes product lines. The SCOPS page says the work is “generally” organized by product lines “but is not limited to” them, and lists business (immigrant and nonimmigrant worker classifications), family (petitions for immediate family members and fiancés), humanitarian (refugees and asylees, DACA, TPS, victims of abuse, crimes and trafficking, waivers of inadmissibility), and students and exchange visitors. Fraud and national-security background-check units also sit at each center.
  • Field offices interview people. The Field Operations Directorate page says field offices make decisions “through written correspondence and in-person interviews.” The same page says the NBC does “centralized front-end processing” of cases that require field-office interviews. Find your local office in USCIS field offices by state. Affirmative asylum interviews happen at the USCIS asylum offices.

Which center has your case: the receipt-number prefix

A USCIS receipt number has 13 characters, “3 letters, such as EAC, WAC, LIN, SRC, NBC, MSC or IOE, with 10 numbers,” according to the USCIS glossary. It is printed on the Form I-797C receipt notice. The USCIS Office of Legislative Affairs’ Congressional Inquiries Refresher (April 2021) gives this list:

PrefixOffice, as USCIS lists it
EACVermont Service Center (formerly Eastern Adjudication Center or Eastern Service Center)
WACCalifornia Service Center (formerly Western Adjudication Center or Western Service Center)
LINNebraska Service Center (formerly Lincoln Service Center)
SRCTexas Service Center (formerly Southern Regional Center or Southern Service Center)
YSCPotomac Service Center
NBCNational Benefit Center
MSCMissouri Service Center (the National Benefits Center)
IOEElectronic filing / immigrant visa fee
MCTFiling of Form I-539, change or extension of nonimmigrant status

The same guide says the receipt number “identifies where the petition or application was first received for jurisdiction purposes.” Because USCIS can transfer cases, the office now working on a case can be a different one. Watch the case status tool for transfer notices. Two more details from USCIS documents:

  • The caseload files use different three-letter codes for the same centers (WSC, NSC, YSC, SSC, ESC). The SCOPS page abbreviates them CSC, NSC, PSC, TSC and VSC.
  • USCIS’s Form I-730 page (updated October 5, 2026) mentions a “HART Service Center.” That name does not appear in the five-center list on the SCOPS page, and it has no row in the caseload files.

Visiting and contacting a service center

In a September 2024 alert, USCIS said service centers “do not provide in-person services, conduct interviews, or receive walk-in applications, petitions, or questions.” It added that they work only on filings that were mailed, filed online, or filed with a USCIS Lockbox. Case questions go to the USCIS Contact Center. The Contact Us page says that when the Contact Center sends a service request to a service center or the NBC, a response should come “within 30 days (15 days for expedited requests).”

Processing times

The USCIS processing-times data reports service-center work as one office, “Service Center Operations (SCOPS).” It does not give separate times for California, Nebraska, Potomac, Texas or Vermont. The National Benefits Center appears as its own office for the forms it handles.

Each center

Sources

Last verified: 2026-10-19. This is general information, not legal advice. Consult an attorney for your specific situation. Service-center details come from USCIS pages and files and can change; check the filing address on the form’s own USCIS page before mailing anything.