The government agency responsible for issuing visas and green cards will soon be deploying its own armed law enforcement officers to investigate and arrest immigrants and their lawyers.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has created a new class of special agents tasked with “making arrests, carrying firearms, executing search and arrest warrants, and other powers standard for federal law enforcement,” according to the agency.
Thursday’s announcement marks a significant escalation in President Donald Trump administration’s anti-immigration agenda, which is now tasking an agency that largely involves administering immigrant benefits — including handling applications for citizenship, asylum and other lawful status — with law enforcement.
“USCIS has always been an enforcement agency,” director Joseph Edlow said in a statement Thursday. “By upholding the integrity of our immigration system, we enforce the laws of this nation.”
The agency’s “historic moment” will “better address immigration crimes, hold those that perpetrate immigration fraud accountable, and act as a force multiplier” for Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies, Edlow said.
The agency will train several hundred agents to search for fraud in immigration applications, with the power to arrest both the applicants and lawyers who helped prepare their petitions — actions that are typically under the purview of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The change will allow ICE and other Homeland Security agents to “focus on disrupting transnational crime and capturing and deporting illegal aliens” while allowing immigration services 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,” the agency announced.
“This is unlawful,” said Allen Orr Jr., former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “USCIS’ mandate is to adjudicate applications, not run raids. Trump’s expansion beyond traditional enforcement shatters the law’s clear limits.”
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https://ca.news.yahoo.com/us-visa-green-card-agency-160925550.html
