USCIS AI Interview Simulator for RAIO Officer Training

Overview

The AI Interview Simulator is an artificial intelligence-powered training tool developed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a component agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to augment training for Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations (RAIO) officers. The tool was announced in March 2024 as one of three pilot projects under the DHS Artificial Intelligence Roadmap, which represents the department's first comprehensive strategy for adopting AI technologies across its mission areas. The pilot was developed in coordination with the DHS AI Corps, a specialised team of AI professionals established to guide the department's responsible AI adoption.

The AI Interview Simulator leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide RAIO officers-in-training with a field-realistic and interactive practice interview experience. The system creates simulated refugee and asylum applicant personas using generative AI, enabling trainees to practise conducting the lengthy interviews that form a core part of refugee status determination and asylum adjudication. In operational practice, RAIO officers conduct interviews that typically last approximately three hours, during which they must elicit testimony from applicants who may have experienced persecution and who frequently communicate through interpreters. The AI Interview Simulator replicates this environment through a chat-based user interface where officers-in-training type interview questions and the generative AI system responds as a simulated applicant, providing new and varied answers to each session.

A distinctive design feature of the system is its intentional incorporation of the imperfections and inconsistencies that characterise real-world interviews. Michael Boyce, Director of the DHS AI Corps, has stated that the system is designed to produce responses that occasionally hallucinate or contain inaccuracies, deliberately mirroring the confusion, dropped information, and misaligned details that occur in interpreter-mediated interviews with trauma-affected applicants. Rather than constraining the LLM to produce only perfectly consistent outputs, the development team chose to embrace these characteristics as pedagogically valuable, helping trainees develop the skills needed to navigate complex, ambiguous, and emotionally charged real-world interview conditions. The system intentionally generates scenarios involving persecution narratives, reticent or confused applicants, and the kinds of toxic or distressing content that officers will encounter in their duties.

Prior to the introduction of the AI Interview Simulator, USCIS relied on experienced officers to conduct mock interviews with trainees, which required removing those officers from their regular caseload responsibilities. The AI system addresses this operational constraint by providing trainees with an on-demand practice environment accessible through the USCIS internal Global training platform. The simulator operates as a standalone microservice within this environment and is only accessible internally to approved USCIS personnel via the myAccess authentication system. All simulated personas are generated entirely by the AI system rather than drawn from real case files or applicant data.

The DHS AI Roadmap announced a five-million-dollar investment across the initial set of AI pilot programmes, though the specific allocation to the USCIS training tool has not been publicly disclosed. The pilot was developed under the DHS Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Framework, first published in 2023, and operates within the broader federal AI governance framework established by OMB Memorandum M-24-10 (Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of AI), issued in March 2024. Each pilot team partnered with privacy, cybersecurity, and civil rights and civil liberties experts throughout the development and evaluation process, consistent with DHS policy requirements.

By October 2024, DHS reported that the first phase of AI technology pilots, including the USCIS AI Interview Simulator, had been successfully completed. The USCIS pilot was found to have successfully supplemented officers' training by giving them opportunities to practise eliciting testimony from simulated applicants. Officers provided positive reviews regarding the programme's ease of use and the ability to access it on their own schedule, outside of structured classroom training sessions. DHS stated that the pilots were conducted while protecting civil rights, privacy, and civil liberties, and that the department gained valuable insights into the real-life impact and limitations of generative AI tools.

The system has been classified within the DHS AI Use Case Inventory as not meeting the definition of a high-impact AI use case under OMB Memorandum M-25-21 (Accelerating Federal Use of AI). This classification reflects the fact that the tool is used exclusively for officer training purposes and does not influence immigration eligibility determinations, case adjudication outcomes, or individual entitlements. The tool does not process personal data of actual applicants and operates on synthetically generated content only.

The DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), in report OIG-25-10 published in January 2025, acknowledged DHS's progress in establishing AI governance structures, including appointing a Chief AI Officer, conducting inventory assessments for component agency AI use cases, and establishing multiple working groups and task forces. However, the OIG identified twenty areas where DHS needs to improve to ensure effective implementation of its AI governance plan, providing broader institutional context for the governance environment in which the USCIS AI Interview Simulator operates.

Classification

Programme Details

USCIS RAIO directorate training programme for immigration officers responsible for conducting refugee status determination and asylum interviews. The AI Interview Simulator augments existing training by providing simulated practice interviews, replacing the need to remove experienced officers from active duty to conduct mock interviews with trainees.

Implementation Details

Agentic AI

Risk & Oversight

Deployment & Outcomes

Sources

1. SRC-003-USA-005 Nextgov/FCW (2024) 'DHS generative AI pilot embraces hiccups of emerging tech', Nextgov/FCW, 16 July. Available at: https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/dhs-generative-ai-pilot-embraces-hiccups-emerging-tech/397982/ (Accessed: 24 March 2026).
   https://www.nextgov.com/artificial-intelligence/2024/07/dhs-generative-ai-pilot-embraces-hiccups-emerging-tech/397982/
2. SRC-001-USA-005 Office of Management and Budget (2024) 'M-24-10: Advancing Governance, Innovation, and Risk Management for Agency Use of AI'. Washington, DC: The White House. Available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/M-24-10-Advancing-Governance-Innovation-and-Risk-Management-for-Agency-Use-of-Artificial-Intelligence.pdf (Accessed: 31 October 2025).
   https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/M-24-10-Advancing-Governance-Innovation-and-Risk-Management-for-Agency-Use-of-Artificial-Intelligence.pdf
3. SRC-004-USA-005 The Register (2024) 'DHS will test using genAI to train US immigration officers', The Register, 19 March. Available at: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/19/us_department_of_security_talks/ (Accessed: 24 March 2026).
   https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/19/us_department_of_security_talks/
4. SRC-005-USA-005 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2024) 'FACT SHEET: DHS Completes First Phase of AI Technology Pilots, Hires New AI Corps Members, Furthers Efforts for Safe and Secure AI Use and Development'. Washington, DC: DHS. Available at: https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/10/30/fact-sheet-dhs-completes-first-phase-ai-technology-pilots-hires-new-ai-corps (Accessed: 24 March 2026).
   https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/10/30/fact-sheet-dhs-completes-first-phase-ai-technology-pilots-hires-new-ai-corps
5. SRC-002-USA-005 U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2025) 'AI Use Case Inventory Library'. Washington, DC: DHS. Available at: https://www.dhs.gov/publication/ai-use-case-inventory-library (Accessed: 31 October 2025).
   https://www.dhs.gov/publication/ai-use-case-inventory-library