USPS Is Getting In on Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Crackdowns

Below the Trump administration, the federal authorities is quickly rising its surveillance dragnet for immigration crackdowns. Along with high-tech expansions, the brand new administration is roping in as many federal companies as doable. On Tuesday, a brand new report indicated that immigration officials are now receiving assistance from one unlikely source: The put up workplace.

Two sources confirmed with the Washington Submit that the US Postal Service’s regulation enforcement joined a Division of Homeland Safety activity pressure to find and deport undocumented individuals. Referred to as the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, it’s a full-blown regulation enforcement company so its officers can carry weapons, make arrests, execute federal search warrants, and extra.

On Sunday, a video from a drug enforcement raid in Colorado Springs exhibits postal inspectors taking part alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Inner Income Service. The DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division confirmed that 114 undocumented individuals had been arrested. Though this type of interagency cooperation isn’t really uncommon for the company, they’ve taken issues a step additional. In response to the Submit, immigration officers additionally need entry to USPIS information, which incorporates monitoring info, bank card information, IP addresses, and extra.

USPIS cooperation with immigration crackdowns comes amidst Trump’s efforts to dismantle the postal service. Per the Submit, an inner e-mail from USPIS a few current assembly with immigration officers said, “We wish to play effectively within the sandbox.” One supply informed the outlet, “They appear to be attempting to placate Trump by getting concerned with issues they suppose he’d like. However it’s full overreach. That is the Postal Service. Why are they concerned in deporting individuals?”

A spokesperson for DHS informed the Submit that the USPIS’ involvement is a “key a part of guaranteeing regulation enforcement has the assets they should fulfill President Trump’s promise to the American individuals to take away violent criminals from our streets, dismantle drug and human trafficking operations and make America protected once more.”

🥂 A part of busting up the underground nightclub in Colorado Springs included the arrest of 114 unlawful aliens.#DEA companions and @DHSgov positioned patrons (within the U.S. illegally) on buses for processing and certain eventual deportation. https://t.co/aLyQUdy5YN

— DEARockyMountain (@DEAROCKYMTNDiv) April 27, 2025

Along with requesting information entry, immigration officers wish to reap the benefits of USPIS’s mail cowl program. As a part of it, postal personnel or inspectors report info on the skin of mail upon request and switch it over to different companies. This info is admittedly solely speculated to be shared to analyze crimes however final yr, a Congressional probe revealed that USPIS fulfills 97 percent of requests.

For immigration officers, USPIS is an ideal associate as a result of it faces fewer exterior restrictions round monitoring mail communications in comparison with digital strategies like e-mail. The mail cowl program additionally (barely) skirts the Fourth Modification protections towards unreasonable search and seizures. Though most searches require warrants, that doesn’t apply to something in plain view, just like the identify, addresses, and different particulars on the skin of mail.

“It’s deeply regarding that the U.S. Postal Service seems to be working as a surveillance arm of federal immigration enforcement with out clear authorized authority or oversight,” Kia Hamadanchy, senior counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, informed Gizmodo through e-mail. “The power of the postal service to function the mail cowl program have to be topic to strict transparency, accountability, and authorized safeguards. Utilizing postal data on this trend to facilitate deportations raises critical constitutional and civil liberties issues.”

Years in the past, a bipartisan group of senators really echoed Hamadanchy’s issues. In 2023, they sent a letter to Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale requesting that the USPIS “reform its insurance policies to require a federal choose to approve any surveillance of Individuals’ mail” to guard from “unchecked authorities monitoring”. The senators famous that USPIS can solely conduct this degree of surveillance as a result of it “operates in accordance with [its] personal guidelines with no supervision by the courts.”

“Nonetheless, USPIS is neither required by regulation to conduct mail cowl monitoring for different companies, nor to maintain it secret from the targets,” the senators wrote. “USPIS is selecting to offer this surveillance service and to maintain postal clients at the hours of darkness about the truth that they’ve been subjected to monitoring.”

In response, Barksdale claimed that the senators’ issues had been misunderstandings and that this system “[is] not a large-scale surveillance equipment” because of the USPIS’ inner laws. Nonetheless, the company’s partnership with anti-immigration efforts exhibits that both the USPIS’s inner laws weren’t really all that or the company is okay to throw individuals below the bus to save lots of itself.