The primary government agency in charge of issuing citizenship, visas and green cards is forming its own police force, as President Donald Trump’s immigration policies widens beyond traditional law-enforcement agencies, the Wall Street Journal reported.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it plans to train several hundred federal law-enforcement agents to look for fraud in immigration applications—and arrest the immigrants in question or the lawyers who helped prepare their petitions.
Agents who go through training will be allowed to arrest people for immigration violations or other criminal charges, and will carry guns, the paper said.
Joe Edlow, the agency’s newly installed director, said in an interview with the Journal that he envisions the new law-enforcement body investigating patterns of fraud, like groups of immigrants from the same country who submit nearly identical immigration applications or citizenship applicants who fake disabilities to avoid taking the English proficiency exam.
They will also make denaturalization of new citizens who lied on their applications a priority, he said.
“I’m not expecting this to have a chilling effect on applications,” Edlow told the paper. “I’m expecting this to have a chilling effect on fraudulent applications, and that’s what I want.”
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