As the Trump administration promotes doubts about the integrity of the voting system ahead of the midterm elections, homeland security officials have investigated more than 150 organizations as part of its effort to scrutinize nonprofits that they say may be helping noncitizens illegally register to vote, according to internal government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The documents also reveal that the department has considered deploying undercover agents to investigate the organizations. If they were found to be actively recruiting noncitizens for voter registration, the agents could gather evidence and “disrupt activities,” the documents said. The findings could then be used to initiate prosecutions and “dismantle illicit facilitation networks,” according to the documents, which were shared with The Times by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization that received them through a public records request.
The details were included in a June memo providing status updates on the Department of Homeland Security’s “election integrity investigations,” an effort by the Trump administration to find and root out noncitizens who illegally voted or registered to vote.
The problem of noncitizens voting in the United States is a rare one, and there is no credible evidence that it has swayed an election. But the administration and its allies have been aggressively seeking data to back up assertions that Democrats could benefit from the support of noncitizens in the Nov. 3 midterm elections, in which Republicans are at risk of losing control of one or both chambers of Congress.
With control of Congress and the future of President Trump’s agenda at stake, Democrats are concerned that false claims about rampant illegal voting could be used by Republicans to challenge the results.
Officials have made it clear that they will target for prosecution and removal any noncitizen discovered to have voted or even registered to vote in violation of federal laws. But the investigations into nonprofits underscore how far-reaching the administration’s pursuit of noncitizens on the voter rolls has become. The investigations have stretched beyond individuals to include organizations that help and encourage people to register to vote, a tactic that critics have denounced as an attempt to intimidate voting rights groups.
The Homeland Security Department declined to comment on ongoing investigations, but said it was focused on “actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found” and “ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”
“Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: We will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation,” the department said in a statement.
According to the memo, the investigations into nonprofits have heavily focused on Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The Homeland Security Department reviewed 82 organizations in Pennsylvania, including the Pennsylvania chapter of CAIR, one of the largest Muslim civil rights groups in the country. Ahmet Tekelioglu, the executive director of the Philadelphia chapter, said its “voter registration program follows all applicable voter registration rules and requirements.”
Federal officials also investigated about 44 groups in New Jersey, but no “derogatory information” had been found based on a review using internal tools, the memo said.
About 26 more groups were under review after they were flagged through a tip line, the documents said. Federal officials were also investigating Black Fork Strategies, an Ohio-based firm that focuses on voter engagement, and several other organizations tied to the firm, according to the documents. The firm declined to comment.
The documents also reveal that Heather Honey, a prominent 2020 election denier who now serves as the department’s point person on “election integrity,” provided 48.4 million records of unknown provenance to federal investigators who are trying to find noncitizens on the voter rolls.
The revelation raises new questions about the quality of records that the Trump administration is relying on as it seeks to scrub noncitizens from the voter rolls before the midterm elections. Ms. Honey is known to come up with and promote false information about American elections, including claims that there were more votes cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters on the state rolls in 2020.
The documents do not indicate where the records from Ms. Honey originated from, other than to note that she obtained them “through independent sources of information.” The documents do not offer any further description of Ms. Honey’s records. But the documents note that these and other records, including more than 50 million that the Homeland Security Department obtained from the Justice Department, were sent to “iLab,” which appears to refer to the Innovation Lab within Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Ms. Honey did not respond to attempts to reach her by phone or email.
Before the 2020 election, Ms. Honey was a private investigator working on counterfeit-goods investigations with no experience in researching complex election systems. In the wake of that election, she connected with close allies of Mr. Trump’s and provided them with theories that sowed doubt in the election results.
On Jan. 6, 2021, in a speech at the Ellipse in Washington just before a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump repeated Ms. Honey’s false notion that more votes had been cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters on the state rolls.
The claim has been repeatedly disputed by election officials who said she was misinterpreting and misusing a state database that tracks registered voters and whether or not they voted in previous elections, but it continued to be repeated by Mr. Trump and others for years after.
She also came up with misleading claims that proved influential over the years that were used to raise concerns about voter registration systems; overseas voters, who tend to vote heavily Democratic; and noncitizen voters. Her claims were amplified through an influential network of election denial activists called the Election Integrity Network run by Cleta Mitchell, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s. Ms. Honey ran the Pennsylvania chapter of the network before her appointment at the Homeland Security Department.
Trump administration officials have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about the number of noncitizens on voter rolls. In July, Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said the administration had identified more than 250,000 potential noncitizens on voter rolls in just four states: Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Some states have disputed the findings, and homeland security officials admitted that their initial claims were unsubstantiated in meetings with state election officials in Nevada. A state review of 185 names that federal officials said had been vetted and identified as noncitizens showed that all were lawful citizens.
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