The United States Postal Service is hiring armed security guards through a multinational private contractor with a history of alleged human rights abuses and price fixing, according to a Raw Story investigation.
USPS has a contract with Prosegur, a multinational security firm, to provide armed guard services, according to public records obtained by Raw Story through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The government redacted the monetary amount of the contract.
Current and former USPS employees detailed alleged abuses by Prosegur-hired security guards and raised questions about supervision and training for armed security officers (ASOs), who are now working at dozens of facilities across the country and clocking thousands of weekly hours.
Researchers also sounded the alarm on Prosegur’s controversial history in Latin America.
“It's not a great company in Latin America, so I wouldn't trust it in the U.S. either,” said Mark Ungar, a political science professor with the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York.
Prosegur did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.
‘Staggering’
Nearly 1,000 ASOs are deployed in at least 55 facilities across the country, approved for nearly 40,000 hours of work per week, according to Frank Albergo, executive director of the Postal Police Officers Association union, which gets notifications every time a facility is approved for more security contractors.
In July alone, USPS planned to deploy ASOs at 18 more mail facilities across the country, approving more than 12,000 hours per week, Raw Story found.
ASOs are located at USPS facilities coast-to-coast in places including Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Indianapolis, Phoenix, San Diego and Tampa, according to internal memos.
ASOs are most commonly deployed at facilities with 1,000 or more employees, Albergo said.
“It's not based on criminal risk. It’s based on headcount,” Albergo said.
Topeka, Kansas, was the latest city set to deploy ASOs with an agreement starting as soon as Oct. 2. Two facilities in Topeka had unarmed guards working 120 total hours per week, which could be increased to 712 hours per week until the armed guards transitioned to their approved 712-hour-per-week deployment, according to an internal memo reviewed by Raw Story.
In response to multiple questions from Raw Story, a spokesperson for the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), the law enforcement arm of USPS, sent an emailed statement.
“At key facilities throughout the country, we have had a mix of armed and unarmed contract security officers in addition to the current career employee Postal Police Officer (PPO) complement,” the spokesperson said.
“They are deployed to provide security and act as a deterrent to criminals or employees who may wish to compromise the mailstream or potentially harm the people inside. To maintain operational security, we do not disclose specific locations of security force deployments. The deployment of armed guards is part of our overall security plan and is not specific to elections.”
Jim Bjork, a former PPO and current armed security guard for a different federal agency in the Chicago area, said a suburban processing center that never had PPOs will now have more armed guards than postal police in all of Chicago.
A September 2026 memo about the deployment of armed guards at the processing center in suburban Carroll Stream, Illinois, indicates the hiring of 12 armed guards. There are currently only 11 active bargaining unit PPOs in all of Chicago, Albergo said.
“That suburban facility with very minimal crime, if any, is going to have this massive armed presence,” said Bjork, who does not work for Prosegur.
“What is it they're going to do? The amount of them, it's just staggering.”
Conflicting job scope
Descriptions of ASOs’ job responsibilities vary across communications, creating confusion on whether or not the armed guards should be considered law enforcement officers.
A job posting from Prosegur for five armed sergeants in Topeka advertises a $31.96 hourly wage and responsibilities of providing “emergency response, including de-escalation, arrest control, and restraining individuals as necessary.”
A Prosegur job post for 10 armed security officers at a facility in Olathe, Kansas, outside of Kansas City, advertises a $23 hourly rate and also emergency response, including de-escalation and detainment support.
The September 2026 memo about the deployment of armed guards at the Chicago area USPS facility characterized armed security guards as "federal law enforcement officers,” and a scope of duty for ASOs from 2024 said the guards have “arrest authority if provided under state law.”
But those responsibilities are “very different than what USPS is telling its employees and unions,” Albergo said.
An August 2026 stand-up talk in Denver, shared by the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), emphasized contract ASOs will not “conduct arrests nor portray themselves as a police officer.”
The spokesperson for USPIS did not confirm whether or not ASOs have arrest responsibilities or law enforcement status.
‘Just shocking’
Postal unions also expressed concerns about training standards for ASOs, as well as lack of direct supervision from USPS since ASOs are employed by a private contractor.
An investigation by CNN and the Center for Investigative Reporting found that armed security guards lack consistent oversight and training, which varies by state.
Training for armed security guards in general ranges from four to 96 hours, with the average being around 40 hours, according to a July 2026 report from the University of California Berkley Labor Center.
By contrast, PPOs undergo at least 1,440 hours of training, Albergo said.
“They're just basically giving people guns without any training,” Albergo said.
A vice president for Prosegur previously testified against the PPOA union during contract negotiations, Bjork and Albergo said.
“He said, ‘My people could do everything the postal police could do,’” Bjork said. “The only thing they couldn't do is make an arrest. It was just shocking.”
Albergo accused USPS of having been “in cahoots” with Prosegur since at least 2020.
“It was ridiculous. He testified against us saying that his armed security guards would be much better than postal police, which is completely not true, and then he admits, ‘Oh yeah, well we actually don't have any arresting authority,’” Albergo said.
Miriam Bell, president of the Charlotte Area Local APWU, said the hiring of ASOs is an attempt at union busting.
“They're trying to get rid of postal police because they're actually unionized workers,” Bell said. “They want the contracted people … we preferred the postal police.”
‘Too much authority’
Bell said she inquired about bringing in PPOs at a Charlotte-area regional processing and distribution center (RPDC) after a local APWU member reported an ASO shoved her to the ground and punched her in the face in April 2024.
“One of the other employees, who was a mail handler, saw him reaching for his sidearm, and they grabbed her and pulled her away,” Bell said. “Mentally, she was scarred, but what was so appalling is they put her on what's called emergency placement to try and terminate her, and I was livid.”
In written testimony, the employee said security guards were “antagonizing and harassing us.”
“I felt unsafe, scared and anxious every time a security guard walked past me,” the employee wrote.
“I can't sleep at night because everytime I close my eyes I see this man's face violently hitting on me.”
Bell’s request for PPOs was denied.
A different Charlotte-area APWU member was fired after making a comment about feeling unsafe based on how security guards act and was “worried that someone could just grab the gun” from a guard, Bell said. The security guard alleged the APWU member actually did intend to take his gun.
The employee who made the comment ended up terminated, which the union is fighting against.
“These guards have been given way too much authority,” Bell said.
Bell said she posted a photo she received of a security guard sleeping on the job at the Charlotte-area facility, sarcastically calling him an example of “Prosegur’s finest.”
“We found out what they were doing was subcontracting locally, so we jokingly called it Leroy and Bubba's security guards,” Bell said.
“They were hiring just anyone and everyone, and these guys were sleeping on the workroom floor. They were forcefully trying to … get with our female employees. It was not pleasant.”
‘Completely ineffective’
The origin of postal police officers came after security guards were found to be “woefully inadequate,” according to a memo from the chief postal inspector dating back to 1969, which identified problems similar to those reported recently — from sleeping on the job to lack of training.
The guards failed to challenge people from entering the buildings and even conspired with thieves, according to the memo.
“The reason why the Postal Police were even created was because the armed security guards didn't work,” Albergo said.
“Now, 50 years later, they're going back to the model that they had already determined is completely ineffective. It's amazing.”
A 2022 report from the USPS Office of Inspector General examined USPIS’ contract with Prosegur, estimated to cost about $250 million over the course of a four-year contract from 2014 — with three two-year renewal option periods.
The report found 30 percent of contractors did not operate with the proper security clearance, and USPS did not adequately measure the quality of Prosegur’s performance. OIG could not verify if contract security guards had completed required training.
“Without training or guidance that identifies the clear roles and responsibilities for carrying out Postal Inspection Service security clearance procedures for contract personnel and an updated statement of work, it is difficult to ensure that Prosegur is complying with contract requirements,” the report said.
“As a result, unauthorized contract personnel have and may continue to access postal facilities — or grant access to other unauthorized individuals — posing a physical safety and security risk to Postal Service employees, property, and the mail.”
Prosegur “struggled with maintaining those very limited standards just for unarmed guards,” said Bjork, who was a past president for the PPOA. “The same company is now running the armed aspect.”
Based on a $23 per hour wage, Prosegur’s armed security guards conservatively cost USPS around $50 million per year just for wages, without benefits or other costs.
The increased hiring comes as USPS continues to bleed money, reporting $2.5 billion in net losses in the third quarter of this fiscal year.
USPIS “always bragged” during negotiations with the PPOA union about not needing PPOs at facilities across the country, Bjork said.
“Now, all of a sudden, they found money to churn these people in,” Bjork said. “It’s amazing that an entity that's losing so much money all of a sudden found a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow to bring in. This is millions of dollars. For what?”
Prosegur was founded in Spain 50 years ago by a man named Herberto Gut, who was backed by a private security firm and cash-transit operation called Juncadella in Argentina.
After Gut died in a car accident in 1997, his wife, Helena Revoredo, became Prosegur’s president in 2004, and his son Christian Gut became managing director in 2008.
The family is estimated to be worth $1.9 billion, according to real-time data from Forbes.
“We have this company that is a huge conglomerate that controls not only ports of entry in multiple countries all over the world but also handles cash through transporting it in these trucks and armored vehicles … who has a huge security force of armored personnel,” said Claire McKean, who is a postal contractor and investigative researcher.
“They are now contractors to the U.S. Postal Service to provide security for the huge regional distribution and processing facilities all over the country here, and it's like what the hell? My head is exploding.”
Revoredo and her family expanded Prosegur’s reach into Africa, Australia, Central America, South America and Asia. During that time, it was accused of violations of human rights and labor codes, threats to union workers and unsafe working conditions.
In Central American countries and in the Amazon, there is a “high level of convergence of organized crime groups, ex-militias” such as MS-13, Ungar said.
“By being in these countries, by participating in these economic sectors, which are highly controlled by the convergence of organized crime, they're perpetuating it,” he added.
“They're helping perpetuate a system which is illegal and/or criminal.”
Five years ago, Juncadella Prosegur was fined the equivalent of more than $25 million for connections to a price-fixing scheme in Chile.
And in 2024, the Norwegian Council on Ethics recommended excluding Prosegur from investment by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global due to risks of “serious human rights abuses” and involvement in “severe acts of violence and abuse of tribal people’s rights.”
The Norwegian move came as Prosegur provided security to Agropalma, a firm involved in the extraction of palm oil in Brazil — which is controversial for its role in deforestation and labor rights abuses, Ungar said.
Between 2021 and 2023, Prosegur's security guards were accused of "serious and systematic human rights violations" while guarding Agropalma's land. They were accused of forcefully blocking local Indigenous communities from accessing their ancestral burial grounds, fishing, and traveling to nearby towns for medical attention and food supplies.
“There have been repeated accusations against Prosegur in terms of providing cover for these palm industries, which have committed very serious human rights violations," Ungar said. "To me, that's the most serious problem in terms of directly knowing a much more close relationship with these kinds of abuses.”
