Stop Sacrificing Asylum Seekers to Trump’s Voter-Fraud Hunt

People seeking asylum are asking the United States for protection from persecution. Their futures can depend on a single interview.

That means asylum officers need the training, expertise, and support to get those decisions right.

But the Trump administration just pulled every immigration officer in a key U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) anti-fraud unit away from their regular duties — including assigning officers to hunt for alleged “unlawful” voters. 

That's not just dangerous for asylum seekers, but for the eligible voters Trump wants to demonize and intimidate. We have to fight back now.

Tell USCIS Director Joseph Edlow: Restore these officers to the work the asylum system depends on.

The officers that Trump's team is reassigning work in USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS), where they help detect fraud and security threats, assist with difficult asylum cases, and train asylum officers to spot red flags.

Now they’ve all been pulled away from their regular work. Internal USCIS correspondence says the agency will be unable to assign these specialists to asylum-officer training “for the near future.”

That matters because asylum cases can hinge on complicated evidence, traumatic memories, and incomplete records. People fleeing persecution deserve decisions made by officers with the training and expert support to get those calls right.

Noncitizen voting, meanwhile, is extraordinarily rare. A nationwide review of the 2024 election found roughly 35 confirmed cases among about 154 million votes cast.

Yet Trump continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen, and his administration is expanding federal efforts to investigate alleged illegal voting ahead of the midterms. Experts warn that the broader campaign is intimidating voters and election workers and undermining confidence in elections.

USCIS should not weaken asylum support to feed Trump's conspiracy theories and voter intimidation campaign. Director Edlow can restore sufficient FDNS officers to their regular responsibilities now.

People seeking safety deserve a competent asylum system — not one stretched thinner by Trump’s obsession with his 2020 election loss.

Add your name and demand USCIS restore FDNS officers to their regular asylum-support and anti-fraud work.

The petition to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow reads:

“Restore sufficient FDNS officers to their regular fraud-detection, national-security, asylum-support, and training work, and stop diverting essential USCIS personnel to the Trump’s obsession with election conspiracy theories and voter intimidation.”