Homeland Security investigators may have broken the law to find non-citizen voters, whistleblower claims
Homeland Security investigators may have violated state laws during a rushed voter-fraud investigation that likely flagged American citizens as suspects, according to a report released Monday.
The allegations by an anonymous whistleblower are contained in a nearly 30-page report produced by the nonprofit watchdog group Democracy Defenders Fund, The New York Times said.
The report was turned over to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who responded by sending a letter Sunday to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
The senators demanded an immediate halt to the probe — called the Unlawful Voter Initiative — and answers to more than a dozen questions about the investigation.
“This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” Schumer told the NYT. “We've never seen anything quite like this. They come up with so many different ways to try and steal the election, but we've never seen anything quite like this.”
Schumer also accused DHS officials of “actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they're supposed to do.”
A DHS spokesperson didn't immediately respond to an inquiry from The Independent, but a department statement to the NYT denied any wrongdoing and defended the efforts to uncover alleged voter fraud.
“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 statement said.
The report released Monday alleges that agents involved in the Unlawful Voter Initiative were trained to use information from various internal and external databases to look up voter histories on state government websites, despite some states limiting access to the actual voters, according to the NYT.
After the whistleblower “expressed concerns” about that to officials leading the probe, the office of chief counsel at DHS said the technique was permissible, the NYT said.
DHS officials also reportedly assured agents they “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented.”
The agents were reportedly expected to complete at least 40 reviews a day, giving them only about 12 minutes to determine a voter's citizenship and voting history.
The data the agents used included so-called alien identification numbers, which are assigned to non-citizens and remain in Homeland Security files even if they become citizens who are eligible to vote, the NYT said.
That reportedly raises the possibility that naturalized citizens could be flagged for illegal voting, with the whistleblower's report alleging that “the current process is knowingly sweeping known U.S. citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters.’”
In connection with Trump's largely debunked, July 16 primetime speech on alleged election fraud, the White House released a DHS document that said it found more than 250,000 non-citizens registered to vote in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Later that month, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said a “serious software error” led to about 6,600 non-citizens being automatically registered to vote from June 2023 to June 2024, with “fewer than 400 individuals” subsequently casting ballots.
During a speech in Georgia the next day, Trump claimed without evidence that officials “caught thousands of votes in New Jersey where illegal aliens were allowed to vote,” according to Politifact.
Audits by election officials and independent researchers have shown that illegal voting by non-citizens is “extremely rare,” according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute think tank.
An online election fraud database compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation lists 25 examples from 2003 to 2023, including eight cases during the 2022 midterm elections.
