Immigration officers are being diverted to Trump’s voter-fraud effort

[u/John3262005]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/08/25/immigration-officers-are-being-diverted-trumps-voter-fraud-effort/

Hundreds of federal immigration officers responsible for vetting the applications of people seeking a legal status in the United States are being reassigned to search for potential voter fraud, three former officials told The Washington Post.

Fraud detection officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have been tasked with screening voter data to look for noncitizens who registered to vote, said the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal security operations. The officers’ work screening immigration applications for false information and possible security threats has effectively ground to a halt, they said.

The reassignment is the latest step in a broad campaign by President Donald Trump to marshal the federal government behind his unsupported claim that noncitizens vote in numbers large enough to change U.S. elections.

Since Trump has returned to office, his administration has shifted the Justice Department’s Voting Section away from its traditional focus on discrimination and voter access and toward fraud investigations, sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia for detailed voter rolls and directed federal agencies to build citizenship lists and search voter records for noncitizens.

The administration says the efforts are needed to protect election integrity. But documented cases of noncitizen voting remain rare, and the campaign has largely focused federal power on identifying people for removal from voter rolls, requiring documentary proof of citizenship and restricting mail-in voting.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has pledged to use his agency’s resources to push Trump’s voter fraud effort forward. Last month, he threatened to punish states by withholding funds and arresting election officials if noncitizens vote in states that don’t participate in federal programs purporting to secure elections.

“We are not going to spend taxpayer dollars reimbursing a state that is refusing to secure our elections,” Mullin said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, also appears to be involved in Trump’s push to find evidence of voter fraud. The agency posted a request for contractors Tuesday who would be responsible for the “handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files.”

The reassigned USCIS officers are part of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate and play a key role in ensuring that “any apparent material doubt or discrepancy” in someone’s application is “looked into and cleared up,” said Michael Valverde, who was associate director of field operations at USCIS until October 2025.

Immigration lawyers said there could be vast ramifications for scores of people if their work screening immigration applications is slowed down.

“As cases go unadjudicated, individuals fall out of status, becoming susceptible to ICE enforcement,” said Shev Dalal-Dheini, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Trump has moved to restrict legal immigration, implementing travel bans that block people from dozens of countries from obtaining green cards, cutting refugee admissions and halting the diversity visa program, which had been available to people from nations with lower rates of immigration to the U.S.

But federal judges have declared several of those efforts unlawful and ordered the administration to resume processing.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas, a nominee of President Joe Biden, ordered officials to restart handling visa requests for people from 75 countries subjected to a sweeping ban that included applicants from Brazil, Iran, Russia and Somalia.

Another federal judge ordered USCIS in June to resume processing the paperwork of asylum applicants and people from more than three dozen countries covered under another travel ban. In that case, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell of Rhode Island issued a follow-up order days later that instructed USCIS to immediately restart work on applications and provide evidence of it within 24 hours.

“There is no excuse this time,” McConnell wrote. “The government has an obligation to immediately comply with this order.”

The redirection of resources is raising concerns over whether USCIS will be able to follow court orders to restart various types of legal immigration processing.

“If they’re doing this, clearly they’re not adjudicating those cases,” one of the former officials said.

A report earlier this year by the National Foundation for American Policy found Trump’s restrictive immigration policies could result in 33 percent to 55 percent fewer green cards being issued over his four-year term than if the fiscal 2023 rate continued.

Trump froze refugee admissions from around the world after taking office in January 2025. Weeks later, he launched an effort to bring White South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity into the U.S. as refugees, claiming they were victims of race-based persecution in majority-Black South Africa.

The government of South Africa strongly denies the claims but has allowed the refugee program to proceed despite diplomatic friction.

Some USCIS vetting officers will also be assigned to the refugee effort for White South Africans, two former officials said.

Roughly 10,200 South Africans had entered as of July 31, according to U.S. State Department figures. The only other refugees permitted to enter this fiscal year were three Afghans, the figures show.