USCIS has formally reinstated a decades-dormant practice for naturalization cases: investigating applicants through their neighbors and co-workers. Policy Alert PA-2026-10, issued August 25, 2026, updates the USCIS Policy Manual to authorize investigators to gather information from an applicant’s community about their character, loyalty, activities and eligibility for citizenship. The guidance took effect immediately and applies to both pending applications and new filings.
The move formalizes and expands a shift that began with an August 22, 2025 memo from then-USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, which resumed case-by-case personal investigations under Section 335(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The new alert folds that practice into the agency’s governing manual and extends USCIS’s authority to waive an investigation not just for individual applicants but for entire classes of cases. USCIS said the community-based inquiries can surface “unrehearsed observations” that an interview, criminal-history check, or submitted documents cannot — including whether an applicant is ineligible over advocacy or affiliations involving prohibited doctrines, such as the violent overthrow of the government.
Neighborhood investigations were first authorized under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, but immigration officials had largely abandoned the practice by 1991 in favor of FBI criminal-history checks and other security screening. USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, working with the Field Operations Directorate, will decide case-by-case or by class of cases whether an investigation is conducted or waived.
Applicants are not required to do anything differently, but USCIS said it will factor in voluntarily submitted character-reference letters — preferably from U.S. citizens who are not family members — when deciding whether to waive an investigation.
References
NepYork – USCIS Reinforces Policy to Question Neighbors and Co-Workers of Citizenship Applicants
