Washington DC, President Trump took action earlier today to prevent Americans from being displaced by foreign workers and offshore labor using federal dollars. In a new executive order the President combats the misuse of H-1B visas, which too often have been exploited to replace qualified U.S. workers with lower-cost foreign ones. President Trump is directing all federal agencies to focus on hiring Americans for lucrative federal contracts, and it requires that only U.S. citizens be appointed to the government’s competitive service.
More Federal Agencies Are Using Undercover Operations
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and WILLIAM M. ARKINNOV. 15, 2014
WASHINGTON — The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show.
At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice.
At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers or accountants or drug dealers or yacht buyers, court records show.
At the Agriculture Department, more than 100 undercover agents pose as food stamp recipients at thousands of neighborhood stores to spot suspicious vendors and fraud, officials said.
Undercover work, inherently invasive and sometimes dangerous, was once largely the domain of the F.B.I. and a few other law enforcement agencies at the federal level. But outside public view, changes in policies and tactics over the last decade have resulted in undercover teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal government, according to officials, former agents and documents.
