The Trump administration announced Thursday that the agency that assesses whether immigrants should be granted green cards and citizenship will add its own law enforcement agents who can carry firearms and make arrests.
The move is a major change for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency that has been kept separate from immigration arrests and enforcing deportations. USCIS assesses applications and interviews immigrants seeking to legally remain in the country by getting green cards, becoming naturalized citizens or being approved for humanitarian programs.
USCIS said in a statement Thursday that under the new rule, it will be authorized to add “special agents” who “will be empowered to investigate, arrest, and present for prosecution those who violate America’s immigration laws.” The final rule by the Trump administration will be effective 30 days from its publication, it said.
In the rule, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem grants the agency the right to hire agents who can make arrests, carry firearms, execute search and arrest warrants and who will have “other powers standard for federal law enforcement,” USCIS said in the statement.
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“USCIS has always been an enforcement agency. By upholding the integrity of our immigration system, we enforce the laws of this nation,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in the statement. “This historic moment will better address immigration crimes, hold those that perpetrate immigration fraud accountable, and act as a force multiplier for DHS and our federal law enforcement partners, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
The agency said in its statement that “USCIS will be able to more efficiently clear its backlogs of aliens who seek to exploit our immigration system through fraud, prosecute them, and remove them from the country.”
Edlow told The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the change, that the agency plans to train several hundred federal law special agents who would look for immigration fraud in applications and could arrest immigrants or lawyers found to have engaged in fraud.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that the rule will allow USCIS to “thoroughly fulfill its national security, fraud detection, and public safety missions related to immigration adjudications.”
Doug Rand, a former USCIS senior official during the Biden administration, said that the agency has long been investigating fraud in applications. “They don’t carry firearms, and they’ve been doing fine for decades,” he said of its agents.
“This move that is calculated at best to scare people and at worst is a really dangerous escalation of law enforcement that’s completely unnecessary and uncalled for at USCIS,” he said.
“USCIS should be fairly adjudicating people’s applications for services. It should not be scaring people from applying for services in the first place,” he said.
Jason Houser, who held senior Department of Homeland Security positions during the Obama and Biden administrations, told NBC News the administration wants “enforcement to be where the benefits used to be. That’s the goal.”
Houser said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been arresting people outside of USCIS facilities, but the new rule would put those arrests “in house.”
The rule creates a feeling that “there’s no place now for migrants to feel like they have an environment to seek refuge, to seek a legal pathway, without there being potentially immediate consequences for arrest or detention,” he said.
Advocates are extremely concerned about a “chilling effect on eligible people to come forward” and adjust their immigration status, said Nicole Melaku, the executive director at National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant and refugee rights organizations.
“This shift in allowing armed agents and having a whole new enforcement apparatus connected to USCIS, is deeply alarming,” she said.
The move comes as the Trump administration seeks new ways to massively increase immigration enforcement operations with the goal of deporting some 1 million immigrants per year.
The rule follows a series of other recent changes at the agency that heighten scrutiny for immigrant applicants. In a memorandum last month, USCIS said it would resume “neighborhood investigations,” which could include interviews with applicants’ neighbors and coworkers, a practice which was waived in 1991.
USCIS also updated guidance in its policy handbook in August to review and consider any “anti-American ideologies or activities,” including on social media, when deciding whether to issue immigration benefits to individuals. “Anti-American activity will be an overwhelmingly negative factor in any discretionary analysis,” the guidance said.
Melaku said the changes create “more barriers for people’s entry points” to remain legally in the United States.
“The desire here is to intimidate people away from accessing the process and instilling fear and mistrust in an agency that has been traditionally tasked with being seen as a public good,” she said.