The move comes as South Africans account for almost every refugee admitted to the United States during its current financial year.
Official figures show that 10,258 refugees entered the United States between 1 October 2025 and 31 July 2026. Of that number, 10,255 were South Africans. The remaining three were Afghans admitted in November.
South Africans consequently represented approximately 99.97% of all US refugee admissions during the ten-month period.
The Guardian reported that internal correspondence from US Citizenship and Immigration Services said every immigration officer in its Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate had been reassigned full-time to two high-priority initiatives.
Those assignments are South African refugee screening and the identification of alleged unlawful voters.
An entire unit redirected
The Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate investigates suspected fraud and national-security concerns in applications for US immigration benefits.
Its officers work in asylum offices, service centres and field offices. They identify cases requiring additional investigation, refer possible offences to law-enforcement agencies and help other immigration officials detect fraudulent documents and applications.
The internal message obtained by the Guardian said the reassignment meant the directorate would be unable to provide immigration officers for asylum-officer training in the immediate future.
USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler confirmed that the directorate was working on several vetting priorities, including election integrity and refugee screening.
However, his response did not independently repeat the internal message’s assertion that every immigration officer in the unit had been reassigned.
The correspondence also did not say that the unit had stopped screening all pending asylum or immigration applications. Its confirmed operational consequence concerned the availability of officers to support asylum training.
South Africans dominate US refugee admissions
President Donald Trump has sharply reduced the number of refugees admitted from most parts of the world while creating a preferential programme for South Africans.
His administration argues that some South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, face racial discrimination and persecution.
The South African government has rejected Washington’s claims of widespread racial persecution and challenged Trump’s description of a “white genocide” in the country.
Pretoria maintains that crime affects South Africans across racial groups and says policies intended to address the economic inequalities created by apartheid do not amount to persecution.
The latest US Refugee Processing Center data do not classify the 10,255 South African arrivals by race. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe every refugee admitted from South Africa as white or Afrikaner.
The numbers nevertheless demonstrate the extent to which the administration has reorganised America’s refugee programme around one country.
Trump suspended most refugee admissions after returning to office. He later directed US agencies to prioritise South Africans considered victims of racial discrimination.
A second assignment with limited evidence
The same anti-fraud officers are also being used to identify non-citizens suspected of registering or voting in US elections.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that unlawful voting by non-citizens is a serious threat to American elections.
However, confirmed cases remain rare. A review by the Center for Election Innovation and Research identified approximately 35 confirmed non-citizen voting cases from about 154 million votes cast in the 2024 general election.
The reassignment therefore places an important immigration fraud unit behind two of Trump’s most politically contentious priorities.
For South Africa, it provides new evidence of the administrative resources Washington is committing to its refugee programme, even as the United States limits admissions from countries experiencing war, political persecution and humanitarian emergencies.
The size of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate’s immigration-officer workforce has not been disclosed in the internal correspondence.
USCIS has also not said how the officers are divided between South African refugee screening and unlawful-voter investigations.
It remains unclear how long the reassignment will last or whether it will delay fraud investigations connected to other immigration applications.
The confirmed facts are that the two initiatives have become priorities for the directorate and that South Africans accounted for all but three of the refugees admitted to the United States during the first ten months of the financial year.
