# Federal Protective Service **Status: stub — expand.** **FPS.** The federal law-enforcement agency responsible for protecting roughly 9,000 federal facilities and the people in them. Housed in the [[Department of Homeland Security]]; moved from the General Services Administration in 2003 and from [[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]] to DHS management in 2009. FPS is small relative to its mission and relies heavily on contract protective security officers, which is why federal-building protection has repeatedly been the stated justification for military augmentation. It acquired structural significance in December 2025, when the Supreme Court read "regular forces" in 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3) to mean the **regular U.S. military** rather than civilian federal officers — meaning the sufficiency of FPS and similar civilian forces is not what the statute measures. ## See also - [[National Guard Federalization Flow]] · [[National Guard]] · [[Posse Comitatus Act]] · [[Insurrection Act]]