The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CIS Ombudsman) invites you to participate in a joint webinar with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on the Humanitarian, Adjustment, Removing Conditions, and Travel Documents (HART) Service Center’s one-year anniversary on Tuesday, April 30 from 2 to 2:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
During the webinar, CIS Ombudsman staff will engage in a dialogue with USCIS representatives to discuss HART Service Center operations at the one-year mark.
Topics will include:
- An overview of the HART Service Center’s purpose and virtual structure;
- The form types that the HART Service Center adjudicates;
- HART Service Center's hiring, onboarding, and training efforts in its first year.
During the webinar, participants will be able to submit questions and comments.
Why this is important
USCIS has stated that, after reviewing its processing times, it enhanced its focus on humanitarian-based benefits. As a result, the agency established the HART Service Center last year with the goal of improving the quality and efficiency of USCIS' humanitarian caseload processing. In its first year, the HART Service Center focused on staffing and training while also completing adjudications.
In the CIS Ombudsman’s 2023 Annual Report to Congress, we examined USCIS’ backlogs in the article titled “Backlogs in the Long Term: 2022 in Review” and made a number of recommendations to USCIS on how to improve operations and address processing and policy issues that are some of the agency’s largest challenges.
To join
Please join the webinar on Tuesday, April 30 from 2 to 2:45 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time by clicking on this Teams Live link. Registration is not required. For more information on attending a Teams event, see Microsoft’s Attend a live event in Teams page.
If you require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the webinar, please contact us by email at CISOmbudsman.publicaffairs@hq.dhs.gov no later than Friday, April 26. Live captions are available in Microsoft Teams, and you can learn more on the Use live captions in a Teams meeting page.
More information
For more information on the HART Service Center, see USCIS’ National Engagement Overview of the HART Service Center and its Frequently Asked Questions.