Behind Closed Doors: The Crisis Inside the Essex USCIS Office
, on May 12, 2026
We are all familiar with the scenes of violence and bloodshed perpetrated by ICE agents in the streets, most infamously in Minneapolis earlier this year. However, what is less known is what happens behind closed doors, i.e. inside the offices of the various immigration enforcement agencies.
One of those offices is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) located in Essex, Vermont. It is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security that oversees immigration to the United States. Its statutory tasks include processing applications for, and extensions of, work visas as well as reviewing petitions for immigrant visas and asylums. It also handles naturalization, whereby foreign nationals and their families become U.S. citizens, a complex process that often takes years. According to sources familiar with USCIS’s inner workings, Trump’s moves since he took office in January 2025 have made the agency’s mission significantly harder to accomplish. In addition to that, the administration’s personnel policies have caused departures and plummeting morale among the remaining staff, further undermining the efficiency of the agency’s work.
The DOGE episode of early 2025 is seared in America’s collective memory, and USCIS was very much among those affected. In a blunt effort to slash government spending, Elon Musk’s outfit offered buyouts to thousands of federal employees, and as many as a hundred workers in Essex ended up parting with the agency. While some used it as an opportunity to retire, many others were simply unwilling to work under an administration that brought nothing by chaos and uncertainty in just the first few weeks in office. They left, taking their knowledge and many years of experience with them. An entirely predictable outcome of these departures has been a slowdown in the processing of applications, which had already taken many months even prior to the DOGE shakeup.
Ideology has further stymied USCIS’s operations. Among its first directives, the Trump administration announced a pause on application processing from between 40 and 75 countries (depending on the exact type of visa). The countries affected include Congo, Nigeria, Burma, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Togo—in other words, mostly African and mostly black. One of the most counterproductive effects of this policy can be seen in what happens to individuals from these countries who are applying for visa renewals: even though they live lawfully in the U.S. and are going through the required renewal process, the pause is turning them into illegal immigrants. In the meantime, the agency’s focus has shifted to what is known as Notice to Appear (NTA)—that is to deportations.
There was also an attempt at the Essex office to utilize some of the officers to support ICE operations during the January showdown in Minneapolis. DHS brass circulated an internal document asking for volunteers to be detailed to ICE. When nobody signed up, plans were made to force temporary staff relocations for the purpose. The idea was abandoned only when Representative Becca Balint intervened and put an end to it.
These actions alone would be sufficient to cause anxiety among the USCIS Vermont staff, but there is more. Our sources report that employees have been seen crying in their cubicles, and supervisors have become less helpful and sympathetic than they used to be because of a growing pressure they face from the DHS leadership. One of the most unwelcome changes, from the employees’ perspective, have been more frequent performance reviews with a new long list of expectations and a cap on ratings of 3 and above. For small but well-performing teams, as many at the Vermont office are, this is particularly hard because it forces supervisors to effectively pick a “sacrificial lamb” each time they do an evaluation. This creates perverse incentives: who wants to work hard, going above and beyond, when chances are that they will still get a low rating due to an arbitrary quota? Moreover, experienced employees have little interest in mentoring because it has become a commitment that does not translate into getting a higher rating. As a result, many workers have been pulling back and doing the bare minimum—and the already long work queues are getting even longer.
If all this is happening in one small office in Northern Vermont, one shudders to imagine the mismanagement, chaos, and demoralization that reign elsewhere, especially in Washington, D.C.
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