Hundreds of federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been assigned to an intensive, weekslong hunt for noncitizens among the nation’s registered voters despite an absence of evidence of widespread fraud, according to documents and training videos reviewed by The New York Times.
Agents are scouring voter rolls managed by the states, and are using personally identifiable information about individual voters, such as their dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers, to look them up on those rolls, according to the documents.
In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their names and personal information into public-facing websites run by the top election official in each state. Some of these sites declare they are meant for individual use, potentially raising privacy concerns.
The extraordinary operation reveals the extent to which the Trump administration is searching for evidence of fraud ahead of the November elections. The government is privately calling the effort the Unlawful Voter Initiative and is pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating such serious crimes as human trafficking and terrorism.
Given the decades of evidence showing how rare noncitizen voting is, it’s unclear what the administration will discover, how verifiable any findings will be and what President Trump or Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin plans to do with those findings. A database managed by the conservative Heritage Foundation identifies roughly 100 instances of noncitizen voting over a quarter-century. More recently, roughly 400 noncitizens — a tiny fraction of the electorate — voted in New Jersey after a software glitch led to their improper registration.
Mr. Trump has falsely claimed since his defeat in 2020 that fraud is epidemic in U.S. elections. This year, he has focused heavily on noncitizen voting, calling it a “crisis of election security” in a speech in July and regularly making unsubstantiated claims that hundreds of thousands of residents who are not citizens have registered to vote or have cast ballots.
The president has used his claims to justify sweeping voting restrictions that he wants Congress to enact, and others that he is trying to implement with an executive order that remains tied up in federal court. He has also suggested that the restrictions, such as requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, would help Republicans win elections in what polls suggest is shaping up to be an otherwise unfavorable year for his party.
Mr. Trump’s unrelenting focus on noncitizen voting has concerned election officials from both parties. So far, the administration has been unable to verify his claims, and has effectively admitted at times that its numbers have been overstated. Yet the public repetition of falsehoods about election fraud has continued to sow doubt and distrust in the electoral process ahead of a charged midterm election that will determine control of Congress.
All of it has left voting-rights groups and Democrats increasingly concerned that the president will try to interfere with the election. And it has alarmed former officials with the Department of Homeland Security that the agency is being weaponized as part of the effort.
“This is a nakedly political fishing expedition using questionable methods to intimidate people from exercising their right to vote,” said Amanda Baran, a former senior citizenship and immigration official from the Biden administration.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the department “is committed to ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in U.S. elections. President Trump and Secretary Mullin have made the integrity and security of our elections a top priority.”
A 50-State Hunt
Core to the operation is a compilation of data on hundreds of thousands of voters from across the country. It is not clear if this is the same data the department cited when it announced in July that tens of thousands of noncitizens were registered in four states — a claim that proved to be vastly overstated. It is also not clear what the criteria were for assembling the data: Early examinations revealed that it includes some United States citizens, according to an individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive operation.
Agents have made more than 1,000 referrals to Homeland Security Investigations of cases determined to warrant further review, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The agents are looking for noncitizens who have registered to vote or actually voted — or for naturalized citizens who registered before they were eligible, according to the documents. The cases then pass to H.S.I. officers who are in the field conducting interviews, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal processes.
According to training documents reviewed by the Times, the agents involved in the operation are part of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. They received a training video last week, and were assigned voter data to scour from the 50-state list, according to a person familiar with the training.
The documents do not state what agency built the list or where the source data comes from. But a training video viewed by The Times states that most of the initial data came from public voter files obtained from states through various agencies within the government.
The agent’s first step is to see if the voter data is a match to D.H.S. databases that include citizenship information, applications and other data regarding immigration status. Following a match, they are then instructed to scrub department databases for citizenship status and dates of naturalization for a “potential unlawful voter.” This could include noncitizens who have cast ballots, those who have registered but not voted, or those who are now citizens but were registered to vote before becoming eligible, according to the documents.
The agents are instructed to use public voter registration websites hosted by secretaries of state or other top election officials in each state. An internal website for the Unlawful Voter Initiative, screenshots of which were reviewed by The Times, includes links for each state directing agents to these websites, most of which were designed for voters to check their own personal registration status and vote history.
An introductory page on the internal website states that “conducting checks on open-source state voter registration websites” and commercial databases “can offer evidence of voter registration or voting.”
One slide from the training reviewed by The Times includes guidance from the office of the chief counsel at Homeland Security, stating that “it is permissible” for agents “to use these state voter websites for purposes of confirming voter registration status as it pertains to an alien’s eligibility for an immigration benefit.” During the training video, agents are told that the Office of Chief Counsel “has advised that it is perfectly OK” for agents “to use those websites to search records, so those links are there for you.”
During a separate part of the training video, a D.H.S. official gives an example using Alabama’s voter portal.
“I have Alabama up on the screen,” the instructor says. “If you are assigned to cases, Alabama cases, and you want to search their state registration site, you would need the first name, the last name, and the date of birth of the person as it was entered at their registration.”
Some of these public-facing voter look-up sites are intended only for use by the voter. In Florida, the voter status portal includes a disclaimer stating “this website is intended for use by a registered voter to determine his or her voter registration and voting status.” In New York, the portal says, “To use this page, you must be a registered voter in the New York State.” In Virginia, users must check a box attesting: “I certify and affirm that the information provided to access my voter registration is my own or I am expressly authorized by the voter to access this information. I understand that it is unlawful to access the record of any other voter.”
Privacy protections and voter information statutes vary from state to state, so it is unclear what, if any, legal gray area federal investigators might be entering.
Nina Sheridan, a spokeswoman for the California attorney general, said the office is “working vigorously to protect confidential voter data, and we stand ready to guard against attempts by the federal government to circumvent longstanding protections we have in place.” She added that the office will be “monitoring closely.”
A Diversion of Resources
The agents from the fraud division who have been pulled from their normal duties for the Unlawful Voter Initiative include a broad range of investigators who specialize in investigating a host of crimes including national security threats and immigration enforcement.
Documents reviewed by The Times reveal that the investigation spans multiple divisions within D.H.S., suggesting a broad, departmentwide operation. While most of the investigatory work is falling to agents within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agents are sending referrals to Homeland Security Investigations and sharing data with D.H.S. Election and Integrity, a new division created during this administration and a top priority of Mr. Trump and Mr. Mullin.
Earlier this week, HSI agents were told of a “Criminal Voter Fraud surge initiative” that would start this week, and involve field interviews and “timely prosecutorial review,” according to documents reviewed by The Times. The surge initiative was first reported by CNN.
Yet during training, D.H.S. officials appeared cautious of overzealous investigations and wary of their data. During one of the training videos, Paul Gleason, a D.H.S. official, urged trainees to avoid incorrectly identifying citizens as noncitizen voters. That error has occurred when investigators have identified noncitizens in government records, such as driver’s license data, without digging in to see that they have since been naturalized.
“The purpose of this process is to refer unlawful voters and unlawful registered voters to H.S.I.,” Mr. Gleason said. “You know, it’s not the opposite. We’re not referring confirmed U.S. citizens. So what I mean by that is, is if you believe somebody likely derived citizenship, we should lean towards not making the referral. Right? We don’t want H.S.I. to go to the doors of U.S. citizens and, you know, put them in handcuffs or question them. We’re only referring people that we believe are unlawful voters.”
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