USCIS shifts anti-fraud staff to Afrikaner refugee and voter screening
Aug 24, 2026
Immigration officers from USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) have been reassigned full-time to two priorities: screening South African refugee applicants, primarily Afrikaners, and screening for alleged "unlawful" noncitizen voters. Internal correspondence shows the reassignment leaves USCIS unable to provide officers to train asylum officers in the near future, as asylum processing has largely stalled under the Trump administration. State department data show 10,255 of 10,258 refugees admitted between October 2025 and July 2026 were from South Africa. Experts and a February review by the Center for Election Innovation and Research have found confirmed cases of noncitizen voting to be rare, contradicting claims by DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens may have illegally registered to vote.
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