U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services opens a new international field office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 9 September 2026. The office begins operations one day after this article was published, and services are available only by appointment.
What the office will do
According to the USCIS alert announcing the office, staff in Addis Ababa will verify the authenticity of foreign documents, investigate suspected fraud, and collect DNA samples to confirm family relationships in immigration cases. USCIS says these functions have historically been supported through coordination with the Department of State, and that the new office gives the agency a dedicated presence to carry them out directly.
USCIS describes the move as part of a broader effort to align its overseas operations with agency priorities and to strengthen its operational capacity abroad.
Ethiopia’s expanding role
The Addis Ababa office becomes only the second USCIS international field office on the African continent, after the existing office in Nairobi, Kenya.
It also arrives against a wider realignment of American visa operations in Africa. The State Department confirms it consolidated routine visa operations across the continent into a smaller number of regional hubs, with Addis Ababa named as one of twenty locations that would continue to provide routine visa services. That change took effect 1 August 2026. The State Department has said the regional hub structure is meant to strengthen security screening, vetting and adjudication while improving the efficiency of visa processing.
What this means for applicants
The office’s stated functions, document checks, fraud investigation and DNA collection, are largely back-end verification work rather than public-facing visa interviews. For someone with a pending immigration petition that requires a relationship to be confirmed by DNA or a foreign document to be authenticated, the practical effect may be a shorter path to that verification, since it can now happen through a dedicated USCIS presence in the country rather than solely through State Department channels.
USCIS has not published a public appointment process or wait-time estimate for the new office. Anyone directed to the Addis Ababa office as part of an active case should follow the instructions in their case correspondence rather than attempting to arrange a visit independently.
What we do not know
USCIS has not said how many staff will be based in Addis Ababa, what the office’s caseload capacity is, or whether further international field offices are planned elsewhere in Africa. This article will be updated if the agency releases further detail after the office opens.
