USCIS establishing steps to increase internal policing of immigration case workers

The USCIS is creating an internal oversight division called the Organization of Professional Responsibility, with the purpose of monitoring immigration case workers. Roughly 26,000 cases are processed daily, and as the Trump administration has made clear its plans to restrict “legal” immigration, this appears to be part of that plan. The new division will aim to eliminate what it perceives as leniency toward applicants seeking legal permanent residency or citizenship.

So far, the oversight plan has three divisions. One will be an Investigation division, tasked with investigating “investigate fraud, waste, abuse, misconduct by USCIS employees.” Another is focused on Counterintelligence, or the “penetration by foreign governments and criminals” into the United States. The third division will be aimed at Inspections, to “conduct independent reviews of specific aspects of agency compliance.”

Lee Cissna, Director of USCIS, touts the Organization of Professional Responsibility as a preventative measure to ensure that caseworkers are not being manipulated by applicants. As we see it, the goal is to have more of an iron hand in obstructing and sabotaging the credibility and function of our immigration system. Director Cissna himself is responsible for removing “nation of immigrants” from the agency’s mission statement, despite being the son of an immigrant himself.

In President Trump’s desire to curtail legal immigration and end the family-reunification model, he is creating a government agency to micromanage other government employees and contractors of USCIS.  The plan is so secretive that the majority of employees and contractors of the USCIS were not made privy to it. We at Soberalski Immigration Law believe wholeheartedly in the goal of family reunification, as we have seen countless examples of how Family-Based visas benefit our community and our country.

For more information, please see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-immigration-agency-to-more-closely-monitor-caseworkers-documents-show/2018/03/15/c8289c0c-2881-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html