Is USPS stationing 'armed guards' at post offices ahead of 2026 midterms? There's no proof

The claim that the U.S. Postal Service hired a private security company to station 1,000 armed guards at post offices in "blue" states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections is unproven. The rumor stems from reporting by the independent newsroom RawStory. The outlet reported in early October that Prosegur, an international security company, had deployed "nearly 1,000" armed security officers to at least 55 post offices ahead of the 2026 elections as part of a contract with the Postal Service. A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement that it had deployed "a mix of unarmed and armed contract security officers to key USPS facilities" but that this deployment started in 2025 and had "absolutely nothing to do with elections." According to Postal Service policy, the deployment of security officers to mail facilities is based on the number of employees, not political leanings in any given location. Neither the Postal Inspection Service nor Prosegur confirmed how many officers had been contracted or where. The president of the union that represents postal police officers said RawStory's "nearly 1,000" estimate was based on the union's tally of approved work hours for contracted guards rather than the number of contracts. Snopes will update this report if additional information surfaces. We asked Prosegur to confirm its contract with the Postal Service and to respond to RawStory's allegations that it had "a history of alleged human rights abuses and price fixing." We await replies to our queries. In October, a claim circulated that the U.S. Postal Service hired a private security company to station 1,000 armed guards at post offices in Democratic-leaning states ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. For example, one X user wrote (archived): "USPS has hired security company Prosegur to station 1,000 armed guards at post offices primarily in blue states. Prosegur has a history of human rights violations in Brazil." Similar claims also circulated elsewhere on X (archived) and Facebook (archived). Snopes readers contacted us asking about the claim. The claim stemmed from investigative reporting by the independent newsroom RawStory. The outlet reported in early October that Prosegur, an international security company, had deployed "nearly 1,000" armed security officers to at least 55 post office locations ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as part of a contract with the Postal Service. A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which is the federal law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, said in a statement on Oct. 28: The U.S. Postal Inspection Service's deployment of a mix of unarmed and armed contract security officers to key USPS facilities has absolutely nothing to do with elections. These deployments have been ongoing since last year, under supervision, and represent a supplemental staffing to our career employee Postal Police Officer complement. The statement said the Postal Service could not confirm where it stationed armed or unarmed guards in order to "maintain operational security." For that reason, we could not confirm the claim that the service stationed additional security in Democrat-led areas. The service's own policy on security staffing said deployments were based on staff numbers at a given facility. Because the claim is unproven, we leave it without a rating. The Postal Inspection Service's statement did not confirm that the Postal Service contracted specifically with Prosegur or how many armed security officers the company had deployed. We asked Prosegur to confirm its contract with the service and to respond to RawStory's allegations that it had "a history of alleged human rights abuses and price fixing." We await replies to our queries. Speaking to RawStory, a spokesperson for Prosegur reportedly said that the company had a "USPS account" that they were not able to discuss the details of. USPS contracted guards since 2025, not connected to elections Cathy K. Purcell, a senior public relations representative for the Postal Service, reportedly told The New Republic in October that the service had deployed armed security officers "since last year." The Postal Inspection Service told Snopes in a written statement that the deployment of armed and unarmed officers was "part of our overall security plan" and repeated Purcell's reported timeline for the deployment, which it also said had "absolutely nothing to do with elections." Frank Albergo, executive director of the Postal Police Officers Association, which represents officers who are part of the service's uniformed force, also told Snopes that wider deployment of armed security officers within the Postal Service began after October 2025. He added that "claims that the guards were brought in to meddle with the election are not supported by the information we have." The Postal Service security staffing policy (Page 3) shared by Albergo in September showed the service allocated security officers — contracted or non-contracted, armed or unarmed — to locations based on how many employees were at a facility, not the political leaning of the state in which it was located. RawStory reported that the service had deployed armed security officials to seven cities in the U.S., all of which were in or near Postal Inspection Service divisions. USPIS hired security through Prosegur from 2019 According to a 2022 report (Page 3) by the Postal Inspection Service Office of the Inspector General, which audits the service, the Postal Inspection Service has contracted security officers through Prosegur since at least 2019, when Prosegur took over another company that the Postal Inspection Service had contracted with since 2014. Albergo said Prosegur was the only company that provided security officers to the Postal Inspection Service in 2026. The inspector general's report said the Postal Service contracted additional security officers to provide "perimeter and building security at assigned postal facilities" alongside the service's own postal police officers. According to the Postal Inspection Service, this was still the case in 2026, as a spokesperson described the deployment of armed and unarmed guards as "supplemental staffing" to existing postal police officers. There were several key differences between postal police officers and contracted security officers. Most importantly, the inspector general's report said (Page 3), postal police officers could "conduct investigations, and make arrests" while contracted security officers could not. Both types of security officers could carry firearms, though Alebergo told Snopes that the security officers Prosegur and its predecessor supplied before October 2025 generally were not armed. Albergo said the Postal Inspection Service employed 440 postal police officers in October 2026. By comparison, he said the Postal Service had approved 39,587 contract guard-hours per week — the approximate equivalent of 990 full-time positions. Though neither Albergo, the Postal Inspection Service nor Prosegur had confirmed exactly how many contracted security officers it hired using the approved hours, Albergo's comparison suggested that contracted security officers far outnumbered postal police officers. Reporting questioned Prosegur's labor and human rights record Though the Postal Service had contracted with Prosegur for several years by 2026, it didn't appear the cooperation had always been easy. The 2022 inspector general's report (Page 4) found that 35 of the 115 security officers reviewed by inspectors during fiscal year 2021 — around one in three — worked on the contract without proper security clearance. Inspectors were also unable to verify the duration and nature of any training the Prosegur security officials had undertaken before working on post office sites. According to the report, the service did not adequately track the quantity or quality of the Prosegur security officials' work, meaning Prosegur could have overbilled the service for work carried out under its contract. According to the inspector general's report, the estimated total cost of the potentially 10-year contract with Prosegur was $250 million (Page 3). The report did not present any evidence that Prosegur actually overbilled the Postal Service during the contract in question. Snopes could not independently confirm the value of any newer contracts between the Postal Service and Prosegur because the former does not report (Page 6) its spending to the federal USAspending.gov database. RawStory's reports on the service's contracts with Prosegur raised additional labor and human rights issues relating to Prosegur's work in the U.S. and abroad. For example, the Charlotte, North Carolina-area branch of the American Postal Workers Union reportedly requested that the Postal Service replace contracted security officers with postal police officers at one site after a contracted security officer allegedly punched a postal worker and pushed her to the ground in April 2024. The Postal Service reportedly denied the request. Miriam Bell, the general president of the Charlotte-area branch of the union, reportedly told RawStory that the Postal Service hired contracted security officials in an attempt at "union busting," which is when a company's management attempts to stop employees from unionizing. Bell told RawStory that two post office employees in the Charlotte area had been fired or attempted fired as a result of speaking up against contracted security officers. Snopes has not independently verified the details of Bell's accounts to RawStory. RawStory's reporting described Prosegur as "a multinational private contractor with a history of alleged human rights abuses and price fixing." In particular, the reporting highlighted a 2024 recommendation by the Norwegian Council on Ethics to exclude Prosegur from investment by the country's government pension fund due to "an unacceptable risk that the company is contributing to serious human rights abuses." The Norwegian Council on Ethics research found that Prosegur's subsidiary in Brazil had been involved in "severe acts of violence and abuse of tribal people's rights." It added that Prosegur continued to operate in "numerous countries in which there are land disputes and serious antagonism between commercial companies and local populations." Prosegur said in a joint account of "labor controversies" from 2013 to 2020 that it believed at least one union that had accused it of human rights abuses had "misused" the concept (Page 8). The company had not returned a request for comment on RawStory's allegations at the time of this writing. For further reading, Snopes previously investigated whether election volunteers were training to confront voter intimidation by federal agents at the polls. Follow our wider coverage of claims related to the 2026 midterm elections here. Sources '5 Common Union-Busting Tactics'. LaborLab, https://laborlab.us/resource/5_common_union_busting_tactics/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.'About the Data'. USASpending.gov, https://www.usaspending.gov/data/about-the-data-download.pdf.Albergo, Frank. 'USPS Armed Guard Program Is a Symptom of Failed Policy, Not a Solution'. FEDWeek, 24 Sept. 2026, https://www.fedweek.com/federal-managers-daily-report/usps-armed-guard-program-is-a-symptom-of-failed-policy-not-a-solution/.Charlotte Area Local APWU. https://www.charlotteapwu.com/?zone=/unionactive/officers.cfm#:~:text=General%20President-,Miriam%20Bell,-Email%3A%20mbell. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.'HOME'. Ppoa, https://www.ppoa.us. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.Jacobson, Alexandria. Armed Guards Descend on USPS as Trump's War on Mail-in Voting Ratchets up - Raw Story. https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/this-may-be-trumps-next-move-to-take-over-midterms-and-privatize-the-mail/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.———. Fears Swirl as Armed Guards Swarm USPS Weeks before Midterms: 'Really Suspicious' - Raw Story. https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/2678013721/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.———. 'What the Hell?' Shock as USPS Gets Armed Guards from Firm Accused of Human Rights Abuses - Raw Story. https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/usps-security/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.McDavid, Margaret B. 'U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Prosegur Contract'. U.S. Postal Inspection Service Office of the Inspector General, https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/2022-08/21-265-R22.pdf.Postal Police Officers – United States Postal Inspection Service. https://www.uspis.gov/careers/postal-police-officers. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.'Prosegur Cia de Seguridad SA'. Council on Ethics, 5 Sept. 2024, https://etikkradet.no/prosegur-cia-de-seguridad-sa-2/.'Prosegur ESG Additional Information'. Prosegur, https://www.prosegur.com/dam/jcr:2cc6b2ba-80e4-408b-86b4-dcccf9a1bc9e/20210625%20Labour%20Controversies%20Record-Corporate%20Governance.pdf.United States Postal Inspection Service – Protecting You and Everyone the Post Reaches. https://www.uspis.gov/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.'USPIS Fact Sheet'. U.S. Postal Inspection Service, https://www.uspis.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/uspis-press-kit-fact-sheet-2026.pdf.'USPS Hires Security Service With History of Human Rights Abuse'. The New Republic. The New Republic, https://newrepublic.com/post/216331/usps-hires-shady-armed-security-midterms. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.'USPS Staffed Security Policy October 2025.Pdf'. Google Docs, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EHf8Y3AneV9VNgh__OEisPlQHGZLqqHm/view?usp=embed_facebook. Accessed 28 Oct. 2026.