The Department of Homeland Security has redirected personnel from its Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) to focus full-time on two initiatives: screening South African refugees and investigating noncitizens accused of unlawful voter registration, according to internal communications reviewed by the Guardian.
The reassignment has affected the USCIS’s capacity to provide immigration officers for asylum training programs in the near term, according to an internal message sent Monday. FDNS officers normally work alongside asylum offices to identify fraud concerns, refer cases to law enforcement, and help asylum officers flag potential issues in applications. The extent to which routine fraud screening of pending asylum applications has been affected remains unclear, though the training disruption signals constraints on the agency’s operations.
The refugee-screening component reflects the administration’s stated goal of restricting overall US refugee admissions while prioritizing South Africans, particularly Afrikaners. State Department data shows that between October 2025 and July 2026, 10,255 of 10,258 refugees admitted to the US were from South Africa, with the remaining three being Afghans. The administration has characterized the target group as facing racial discrimination, claims the South African government has disputed as unfounded and politically motivated.
The unlawful voter initiative appears connected to the administration’s broader campaign to identify and remove noncitizens from electoral rolls. Since March 2025, an executive order has permitted state election officials access to USCIS databases to investigate alleged noncitizen voters, and the agency has moved to bar naturalization for green card holders who voted or registered to vote. Research has found such instances to be uncommon: a February 2026 review identified approximately 35 confirmed cases of noncitizen voting in the 2024 general election among roughly 154 million votes cast. While DHS officials have cited investigations into hundreds of thousands of allegedly ineligible voters in multiple states, subsequent reporting indicated confirmed numbers were substantially lower.
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