The federal agency that grants citizenship and green cards on Thursday declared “war” on rampant fraud in the system, including coaching on citizenship tests.<\/p>\n

Joseph Edlow, the newly-installed director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, noted several ways illegal immigrants wrongly win citizenship, then said, “I am declaring war on fraud.”<\/p>\n

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Hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies for an online conference on reforms he is bringing to USCIS, Edlow said he is expanding his agency’s investigative function<\/a> by hiring agents to sniff out fraud in the system.<\/p>\n
“This is not a police force,” he emphasized, explaining, “What we are looking at incorporating into USCIS is an investigative agency, think more HSI or special agents that we want to use to augment existing special agents already within the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to really do a deep dive into immigration fraud, into large, mass scale fraud, national security issues<\/a> and other criminality that is within the jurisdiction of the agency.”<\/p>\n
The planned expansion is unprecedented in USCIS history, said an official.<\/p>\n
The crackdown on immigration fraud will go well beyond typical examples, including faux marriages.<\/p>\n
As examples, Edlow cited phony sponsorships by citizens of immigrants where the sponsor is dead. He said that some at USCIS were fully aware of fraud in the past but ignored it.<\/p>\n
“I was absolutely shocked to learn of the degree of fraud in the sponsorship for parole, parole granting, granted aliens who are coming in. These sponsors, I found out, some of them weren’t even alive at the time that they were the sponsors. And again, I’ve heard anecdotally that people in the administration and in the USCIS at the time were aware of these problems. So this is a concern. We absolutely do need to really hone in on that type of fraud,” he told CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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<\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>He also said that the agency plans to toughen up citizenship testing by requiring those wanting to become Americans to explain more fully why they want in.<\/p>\n<p>“I don’t want this test to be so hard that it’s impossible, but I want it to be thought-provoking questions. A question of simply, hey, name two federal holidays, and name one branch of government, or name your governor, is simply not enough. We need to know more, especially if we’re going to really understand whether someone has a true attachment to the Constitution as required by the statute,” said Edlow.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/washington-secrets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Coaching for citizenship tests should also be restricted, said Edlow, who has been on the job since mid-July and was a former policy director and chief counsel for the agency.<\/p>\n<p>“Being able to be coached through this process right now is not something that should be allowed,” he said before adding, “I am declaring war on fraud. I am declaring war on anyone that is coming to this country and wants to get a benefit but doesn’t want the responsibility of what it means to actually be a U.S. citizen.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <script data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/cdn-cgi\/scripts\/5c5dd728\/cloudflare-static\/email-decode.min.js\"><\/script> <\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USCIS chief vows to fight fraud and toughen citizenship tests<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2647,"featured_media":2482433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Citizenship-Test-Reform-e1757006188523.jpg?w=696","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[62596,6909,3813],"class_list":["post-2482432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-citizenship-tests","tag-fraud","tag-immigration"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Citizenship-Test-Reform-e1757006188523.jpg?w=696","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2482432"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2482436,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2482432\/revisions\/2482436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2482433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2482432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2482432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2482432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}