All US anti-fraud immigration officers moved to screen South African refugees

Every immigration officer in the United States unit that detects fraud in immigration applications has been reassigned full-time to two tasks: screening South African refugees and screening for alleged unlawful voters.

As The Guardian reported on 25 August, the reassignment of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) was set out in internal correspondence the outlet saw. An internal message sent on the Monday said all FDNS immigration officers had been moved onto one of the two “high-priority” initiatives, and that because of this the agency would not be able to assign officers to its training portfolio “for the near future”.

FDNS sits inside US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which in turn sits inside the Department of Homeland Security. The directorate is the part of the agency that looks for fraud and national security concerns in immigration benefit applications, including asylum claims. Its officers work alongside asylum offices to flag cases needing investigation, refer matters to law enforcement, and help asylum officers spot fraud and other red flags.

USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler told The Guardian that the directorate “works on different vetting portfolios to combat fraud, maintain the integrity of the immigration system, and detect national security and public safety threats”, and that this mission set includes election integrity and refugee screening.

The message seen by The Guardian addresses only the agency’s ability to supply officers to train asylum officers. It does not say whether routine FDNS screening of pending asylum applications has also slowed or stopped, and The Guardian stated it had not independently confirmed whether routine asylum screening was affected.

What the refugee numbers show

The refugee-screening priority sits inside an American resettlement programme that has been sharply curtailed overall while admissions from South Africa have been prioritised. The most recent refugee report from the US state department recorded that of 10,258 refugees admitted to the United States between 1 October 2025 and 31 July 2026, 10,255 were from South Africa. The remaining three were Afghans admitted in November.

That figure is the clearest available measure of what the screening pipeline is now built around. US officials have said the South Africans being prioritised are primarily Afrikaners, who they say face racial discrimination and “white genocide”. The South African government has rejected that claim as unfounded and politically motivated.

The second initiative named in the internal message, screening for “unlawful voters”, forms part of a wider American effort to identify noncitizens alleged to have registered or voted in US elections. USCIS has already moved to bar naturalisation for green card holders who voted or registered to vote, and to pursue deportation proceedings against them. A March 2025 executive order opened the agency’s Save database to state election officials, which fed investigations in several states into noncitizens accused of casting ballots.

Confirmed instances of noncitizen voting have been found to be rare. A February review by the Center for Election Innovation and Research recorded roughly 35 confirmed cases in Iowa in the 2024 general election. 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 that the confirmed number was far lower.

What it means from here

For South Africans watching the American system, the practical effect of the reassignment is a queue that now runs through a single unit. Refugee screening for South African applicants has been designated a full-time priority for every officer in the directorate, while the training that prepares asylum officers for specialised casework has no officers assigned to it for the near future.

South Africa’s own immigration and refugee system is administered by the Department of Home Affairs, which processes asylum claims under the Refugees Act and runs the country’s refugee reception offices. The American programme described in the correspondence is a separate system, but it draws on the same pool of South African applicants, and the numbers above show how heavily that system now leans on this country.

What is not established is whether the reassignment has slowed the screening of pending asylum applications, or how many South African applicants are waiting. The internal message does not say, and The Guardian did not confirm it.

The claim that Afrikaners face racial discrimination and “white genocide” in South Africa remains a claim by US officials. The South African government has rejected it as unfounded and politically motivated, and that rejection stands on the record alongside the resettlement figures.

Source: The Guardian, US immigration officers reassigned to screen South African refugees and find ‘unlawful’ voters