Trump Administration Reassigns Immigration Fraud Officers to South African Refugee Screening and Voter Integrity Checks

The Trump administration has redirected all immigration officers from a critical anti-fraud unit to focus exclusively on two new high-priority objectives: screening South African refugees and investigating alleged “unlawful” voters.

According to internal correspondence obtained by the Guardian, officers from the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) have been moved to full-time roles within these two initiatives. This shift has reportedly left U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) unable to provide personnel to train asylum officers for the foreseeable future.

The reallocation occurs as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) continues its aggressive immigration crackdown during the second Trump term. As a result of these shifts, the processing of asylum claims has slowed significantly, leaving many applicants in a state of legal uncertainty.

“All FDNS IOs [immigration officers] have been reassigned full-time to one of two high-priority USCIS initiatives (South African refugee screening and unlawful voter screening),” an internal communication sent on Monday stated. “Because of this, we will not have the ability to assign IO’s [immigration officers] to the training portfolio for the near future.”

USCIS has not yet issued a formal response to requests for comment.

The FDNS is the specialized unit within USCIS tasked with identifying fraud and national security threats within immigration applications, including asylum requests. These officers typically collaborate with asylum offices to flag suspicious cases, conduct deeper investigations, and refer potential criminal matters to law enforcement.

This mass reassignment represents a major pivot in departmental resources. While the internal memo specifically highlights the lack of available trainers for asylum officers, it remains unclear if the routine screening of pending asylum applications by FDNS staff has also been interrupted.

A deficit in training could limit the specialized expertise available to asylum officers, while any broader slowdown in investigative casework could directly impact the resolution of pending cases. The Guardian has not independently verified the extent to which routine asylum screening has been impacted.

The focus on South African refugee screening aligns with the administration’s efforts to restrict general refugee resettlement while prioritizing South Africans—specifically Afrikaners—based on claims from U.S. officials regarding racial discrimination and “white genocide.” The South African government has dismissed these allegations as baseless and politically driven.

Recent U.S. State Department data highlights this trend: of the 10,258 refugees admitted to the United States between October 1, 2025, and July 31, 2026, 10,255 were from South Africa, while only three were Afghan nationals admitted in November.

The second priority, screening for “unlawful voters,” is part of a wider administration push to identify non-citizens suspected of registering or voting in U.S. elections. However, many experts have questioned the scale of the issue cited by the president.

USCIS has already implemented measures to block naturalization for green card holders who have participated in voting or registration, and has moved to initiate deportation proceedings. Furthermore, a March 2025 executive order granted state election officials access to the USCIS SAVE database, triggering various state-level investigations into alleged noncitizen voting.

Evidence suggests that noncitizen voting is extremely rare. A February 2026 study by the Center for Election Innovation and Research found approximately 35 such instances across the entire country during the 2024 general election, out of a total of roughly 154 million votes cast.

Although DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed in July that the department had identified more than 250,000 potentially illegally registered noncitizens in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, subsequent findings indicated the actual number of confirmed cases was significantly lower.

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