Do Janitors Need to Be U.S. Persons in ITAR Facilities?

What ITAR actually controls

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations, 22 CFR parts 120 to 130, are administered by the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC). They control defense articles on the U.S. Munitions List, related technical data and defense services. Under 22 CFR 120.50, an export includes releasing technical data to a foreign person inside the United States, often called a deemed export.

The detail that matters for cleaning crews is in 22 CFR 120.56: technical data is released through visual or other inspection by a foreign person of a defense article that reveals technical data, as well as through oral or written exchanges. U.S. person is defined at 22 CFR 120.62 and foreign person at 120.63. Dual-use items under the Commerce Department's Export Administration Regulations carry a similar deemed export concept.

Where a cleaning crew could create a release

Janitors have no need for technical data, but their work takes them past it. The exposure points are predictable: drawings and markups left on desks, whiteboards after a design review, unlocked screens, prototypes and test articles on benches, labeled parts in assembly areas, and printouts in trash or recycling bins. A cleaner who never reads anything has still been given the opportunity to see it, and that is what compliance teams plan around.

Conversations count too. A crew cleaning a conference room during a technical meeting can hear controlled information, which is one reason many sites schedule cleaning of program spaces only when they are empty.

Four ways to assign ITAR facility janitors to controlled areas

Facilities generally use one of these approaches, or a mix by zone. Many registered companies record the choice in a technology control plan that sets out physical access rules for each controlled area, so security, managers and the cleaning contractor all work from the same document.

Verifying U.S. person status without discriminating

The anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. 1324b, prohibits citizenship status discrimination in hiring, and the Justice Department's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section has settled cases with employers that restricted ITAR-related work to U.S. citizens when the regulation only required U.S. persons. Refugees and asylees are U.S. persons for ITAR purposes and must not be screened out.

In practice, export control status is confirmed as a separate compliance step from Form I-9 employment verification, applied consistently to everyone assigned to controlled areas, and kept in a confidential record. Restrict only the assignments that genuinely need it, not every cleaning job in the company.

Other rules defense sites layer on

ITAR is often only one layer. Contractors handling controlled unclassified information follow NIST SP 800-171, whose requirement 3.10.3 (Revision 2) calls for escorting visitors and monitoring visitor activity. Areas holding classified information fall under the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual, 32 CFR part 117, where uncleared workers need escorts. If a cleaner is exposed to controlled data without authorization, the registered company decides whether to file a voluntary disclosure with DDTC under 22 CFR 127.12, which is why sites prefer prevention to cleanup.

EBS in access-controlled facilities

EBS has experience in high-security and access-controlled environments, where confidentiality, security protocols and accountability matter as much as the cleaning. Team members are trained, vetted, uniformed and background-checked. If your site restricts certain zones to U.S. persons or escorted crews, raise it at the walkthrough so the requirement is written into the scope and the staffing plan before service begins.