United States: USCIS Issues Final Rule Adding Special Agents with New Law Enforcement Authority
September 4, 2025
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At a glance
- A USCIS final rule expands criminal law enforcement authority and practice within the agency, empowering certain USCIS officials to make arrests, carry firearms, and execute search and arrest warrants, among other new authorities.
- The final rule is scheduled to take effect 30 days after its September 5, 2025 publication in the Federal Register.
- The rule was issued without regulatory review or public comment, and may be challenged in court.
The issue
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is issuing a final rule that permits USCIS employees to be classified as special agents authorized to make arrests, carry firearms, and execute search and arrest warrants, among other law enforcement activities. Previously, these functions have primarily been the purview of the other two Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sub-agencies – Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – as well as other federal law enforcement agencies.
USCIS says that it will recruit and train special USCIS agents who will exercise the new law enforcement authorities, detailed further below. It is not known whether there will be a specific unit within USCIS designated for these new functions, or whether the agents will be decentralized and positioned throughout the agency, perhaps with dual roles within the organization.
The final rule will be published in the Federal Register on September 5 and will take effect 30 days later. USCIS says that the final rule codifies an existing delegation of authority held by the USCIS Director, and that therefore, under the procedural exception to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the final rule was not required to be sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for regulatory review or provided to the public for comment. The rule could be challenged in court.
Background
On January 20, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its three immigration-related subagencies – USCIS, ICE, and CBP – to prioritize immigration enforcement. In response to the EO, on May 2, 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem executed a DHS delegation to authorize the USCIS Director to undertake and re-delegate within USCIS a wide range of civil and criminal law enforcement actions, including issuing and executing detainers and arrest warrants.
Nevertheless, under the current policy framework, implemented through a July 23, 2025 memorandum of agreement (MOA) executed by USCIS and ICE, the two DHS sub-agencies split and coordinate the investigation and referral of immigration benefit fraud cases – USCIS retains full authority over civil fraud investigations, but must refer any potential criminal activity or investigation to ICE. Under this July agreement, ICE has the sole responsibility for conducting criminal investigations of immigration benefit fraud. USCIS’s new final rule changes this framework by expanding USCIS authority and practice into the area of criminal immigration investigations and enforcement.
A closer look
USCIS’s announcement of the final rule states that the agency is adding special agents to USCIS with new law enforcement authorities. The final rule authorizes these special agents to:
- Initiate an investigation into a criminal immigration violation;
- Arrest an individual for crimes committed in the presence of the designated officer;
- Execute search warrants for immigration and non-immigration violations;
- Serve arrest warrants for immigration and non-immigration violations;
- Carry firearms, after training;
- Use non-deadly force and initiate a vehicular pursuit to apprehend those attempting to avoid apprehension; and
- Use deadly force in certain situations.
As noted above, USCIS plans to recruit and train special agents in the new authorities, though the details of their role in the USCIS organization are not known. In a public interview, however, USCIS Director Joseph Edlow indicated that changes at USCIS are intended to focus on increased investigations of criminal violations, especially related to large-scale patterns of fraud, rather than on increased arrests.
What’s next
Implementation of this rule is likely to lead to an increase in enforcement activity, and may lead to additional requests for evidence, notices of intent to deny, and notices to appear issued by USCIS, as well as additional site visits and inquiries by the newly trained special agents.
The final rule is scheduled to take effect 30 days after its September 5 publication date. It is possible that the rule will be challenged in court.
Fragomen is monitoring implementation of the final rule and will provide further updates as we learn more about implementation.
This alert is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions, please contact the immigration professional with whom you work at Fragomen.
