Request for Evidence

Then someone asked whether he had previously done unpaid work, and he said yes, at the Community Dreams Foundation.

Another commenter responded, it seems like all CDF people are getting RFE.

The claim has not been independently verified, but we can see that ICE's own 2024 data shows that Community Dreams Foundation had 795 opt students, which makes it one of the largest opt employers in the country.

and Community Dream Foundation itself publicly advertise unpaid volunteer positions in software engineering, data, AI, machine learning, project management, and other fields, while explicitly saying it supports CPT opt candidates and is opt friendly.

So the bigger question is, how many organizations like the Community Dreams Foundation offer these unpaid jobs that allow international graduates to keep their opt employment status going? And is USCIS finally starting to scrutinize them? Well, that's certainly how it appears from this thread that we find on Reddit.

But this person writes, STEM opt RFE, asking for employment history, switching employers next week.

Recently, I received an RFE for my pending STEM opt extension.

This is essentially a request for information from USCIS.

For example, if a client has any criminal history, they're gonna be most at risk, but any denial under this 125 policy will now unfortunately result in an NTA and removal proceedings being initiated.

This month, August 5th, 2026, USCIS published Policy Alert 2026-05, Basically, giving greater discretion to USCIS officers to deny an application without first issuing a request for evidence RFE or a notice of intent to deny a NOID.

Now, RFEs and NOIDs, you know, I always saw them as great second bite at the apple, an opportunity to fix problems.

what USCIS claims is lacking.

Most of the time it's evidence, sometimes it's legal arguments.

Those cases where you can't get the required evidence, I think there can be a greater risk of a denial.

Try to get all the required evidence and hopefully you'll have it and then you file your petitions with that required evidence to reduce the likelihood of denial without an RFE or a NOID.

So the policy doesn't say RFEs and NOIDs will not and cannot be issued, but I think we're going to see less of them for the remainder of the Trump administration.

wasting our clients' time, money, you know, it delays filings, they gotta mail them to us, whatever.

But now with this policy of denying cases without an RFE, we could end up months from now with a denial for not following the form instructions.

So this is how this goes.

USCIS is saying, not only do we not need your photos, we will not accept them for processing.

This is silly.

Yeah, because how else do you get them to fix it? I mean, we send feedback emails.

It's not like they're going to send an RFE that says you failed to send your photos, send them in.

They'll just send a denial and they take the filing fees.