US pulls all its anti-fraud immigration officers to screen South Africans

Every immigration officer in the United States unit that investigates fraud in immigration applications has been moved full-time onto two jobs, and both of them concern South Africa and American voters.

Officers of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, known as FDNS, were reassigned to what internal correspondence calls two high-priority initiatives, South African refugee screening and the screening of alleged unlawful voters. The correspondence was published by The Guardian on 25 August 2026. The same message records the consequence for the agency’s own work. Because of the reassignment, US Citizenship and Immigration Services will not be able to assign officers to its asylum-officer training programme for the near future.

The numbers behind the first initiative are striking. The most recent refugee report from the US state department records 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. In other words, the American refugee programme, which the Trump administration has curtailed sharply, is now overwhelmingly a South African programme.

The second initiative concerns people who are said to have registered or voted unlawfully in US elections. Confirmed instances of that offence are rare. A February review by the Center for Election Innovation and Research counted roughly 35 confirmed cases in Iowa in the 2024 general election. The Department of Homeland Security 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. The confirmed number later emerged as far lower.

USCIS sits inside the Department of Homeland Security, which has run the administration’s immigration crackdown. Asked about the reassignment, a USCIS spokesperson, Zach Kahler, said 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. He said that mission includes a number of priorities, including election integrity and refugee screening.

What the internal message does not say matters as much as what it does. It 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 slowed or stopped. The Guardian reported that it had not independently confirmed whether routine asylum screening has been affected.

For South African readers, the practical effect is felt at the American end. FDNS officers are the people who check immigration benefit applications, including asylum claims, for fraud and security concerns. They work with asylum offices to flag cases needing investigation, refer matters to law enforcement, and help asylum officers spot fraud and other red flags. When those officers are moved, the vetting capacity they provided moves with them.

The South African government has rejected as unfounded and politically motivated the American characterisation of racial discrimination against Afrikaners, which US officials have described as white genocide. That characterisation is the stated basis for prioritising South African admissions, primarily Afrikaners. The record shows what the intake actually looks like, and it is almost entirely South African.

For anyone in South Africa weighing a refugee claim in the United States, the picture is a programme that has been narrowed to one nationality while the officers who vet the claims have been pulled off their normal work. The asylum system, already slowed to a near halt under the current administration, now has fewer people available to train the officers who decide those cases.

The South African angle cuts both ways. The country is the source of almost every refugee the United States has admitted in this period, and it is also the subject of a screening priority that has absorbed an entire anti-fraud directorate. That is a significant diversion of American enforcement resources towards South Africa, whether or not South Africans asked for the attention.

As The Guardian reported on 25 August 2026, the reassignment was revealed in internal correspondence seen by that outlet. The Enquirer’s account here draws on the facts of that reporting. What this paper adds is the South African reading of it, the numbers that show how completely the American refugee programme now runs through this country, and the plain consequence for anyone whose file is waiting in a queue.

The Enquirer will continue to report on the movement of South Africans through foreign immigration systems and on the South African government’s response to the claims made about this country abroad.

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