Background
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service. Its mission is to support and protect the Postal Service and its employees,infrastructure, and customers. As the oldest federal law enforcement agency in the United States, the Postal Inspection Service enforces over 200 federal statutes and routinely collaborates with other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies onbcriminal investigations.
On January 22, 2026, the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (USPS OIG) received a congressional request to assess the Postal Inspection Service’s potential resource diversions to immigration enforcement activities and its impacton the agency’s ability to investigate white-collar crime. The request, which was also addressed to four other OIGs, identified congressional interest in the following areas:
■ Law enforcement personnel who have been reassigned to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other parts of the DHS since January 2025.
■ White-collar crime case7 data; including impacts caused by personnel and resource shortages due to diversions to immigration-related functions.
■ Prosecution data, including the number of referrals, indictments, and defendants sentenced.
■ Internal assessments conducted to evaluate the diversion of resources impacts, including any actions taken or planned based on the assessment results.
■ Complaints or whistleblower disclosures related to resource diversions.
■ Safeguards to ensure agencies continue to meet statutory white-collar crime obligations despite the resource diversions.
Results in Brief
This review, initiated in response to the aforementioned congressional request, assessed congressional concerns about the Postal Inspection Service’s involvement in immigration-related activities since January 2025 and did not identify impacts to white-collar crime investigations attributable to resource shifts toward immigration enforcement. To address the questions in the congressional request, we reviewed data obtained from the Postal Inspection Service and Postal Inspection Service officials’ assertions about the data. Our analysis, therefore, was limited to available data and relied in part upon those assertions.
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Source: USPS OIG