United States Immigration and Naturalization Service
former immigration service of the United States
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was a United States federal government agency under the United States Department of Labor from 1933 to 1940 and under the United States Department of Justice from 1940 to 2003.
Referred to by some as former INS and by others as legacy INS, the agency ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred to three new entities – United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – within the newly created United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as part of a major government reorganization following the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Prior to 1933, there were separate offices administering immigration and naturalization matters, known as the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization, respectively. The INS was established on June 10, 1933, merging these previously separate areas of administration. In 1890, the federal government, rather than the individual states, regulated immigration into the United States, and the Immigration Act of 1891 established a Commissioner of Immigration in the Treasury Department. Reflecting changing governmental concerns, immigration was transferred to the purview of the United States Department of Commerce and Labor after 1903 and the Department of Labor after 1913. In 1940, with increasing concern about national security, immigration and naturalization was organized under the authority of the Department of Justice.
In 2003 the administration of immigration services, including permanent residence, naturalization, asylum, and other functions, became the responsibility of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS), which existed under that name only for a short time before changing to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). The investigative and enforcement functions of the INS (including investigations, deportation, and intelligence) were combined with the U.S. Customs investigators to create U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The border functions of the INS, which included the Border Patrol and INS Inspectors, were combined with U.S. Customs Inspectors to create U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “United States Immigration and Naturalization Service” is former immigration service of the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and Immigration, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q194984. VIAF identifies the subject as 138894868. The Library of Congress control number is n79053784. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1940, 2003 and 2001.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “United States Immigration and Naturalization Service” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.