US immigration officers reassigned to screen South African refugees and find ‘unlawful’ voters

All US immigration officers working for a key anti-fraud unit have been reassigned by Donald Trump’s administration to focus on screening South African refugees and alleged “unlawful” voters.

Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) immigration officers have been shifted full-time on to two “high-priority” initiatives, according to internal correspondence seen by the Guardian, leaving US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) unable to provide officers to train asylum officers in “the near future”.

USCIS is inside the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has led Trump’s immigration crackdown during his second term. The processing of asylum claims has largely ground to a halt during Trump’s administration, leaving many seeking asylum in limbo.

“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 message, sent on Monday, said. “Because of this, we will not have the ability to assign IO’s [immigration officers] to the training portfolio for the near future.”

USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

FDNS is the USCIS unit responsible for detecting fraud and national security concerns in immigration benefit applications, including asylum claims. Its officers work with asylum offices to identify cases requiring further investigation, refer matters to law enforcement, and help asylum officers identify potential fraud and other red flags.

The reassignment marks a significant diversion of FDNS personnel. The message addresses only the agency’s ability to provide officers for asylum officer training; it does not say whether routine FDNS screening of pending asylum applications has also slowed or stopped.

A disruption to training would limit specialized instruction for asylum officers, and a broader slowdown in casework screening would have more direct consequences for pending applications. The Guardian has not independently confirmed whether routine asylum screening has been affected.

The refugee-screening priority is part of the Trump administration’s bid to sharply curtail US refugee resettlement while prioritizing admissions of South Africans, primarily Afrikaners, whom US officials say face racial discrimination and “white genocide”, which the South African government has rejected as unfounded and politically motivated.

The most recent refugee report from the US state department detailed that of the 10,258 refugees admitted to the US between 1 October 2025 and 31 July 2026, 10,255 were from South Africa. The remaining three were Afghans admitted in November.

The second priority identified in the message, screening for “unlawful voters”, appears to be part of a broader administration effort to identify noncitizens alleged to have registered or voted in US elections. Experts have expressed skepticism of the president’s claim that this is a significant problem.

USCIS has already moved to bar naturalization for green card holders who voted or registered to vote, and pursue deportation proceedings against them. A March 2025 executive order opened USCIS’s Save database to state election officials, fueling investigations in several states into noncitizens accused of casting ballots.

Confirmed instances of noncitizen voting have been found to be rare: a February 2026 review by the Center for Election Innovation and Research identified roughly 35 such cases nationwide in the 2024 general election, out of about 154m votes cast.

While the DHS secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said in July that the department had identified “over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote” in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it later emerged the confirmed number was far lower.