‘Alarm as Trump Deploys Hundreds of DHS Agents on Nationwide Voter Witch Hunt’: Report

The Trump administration has assigned hundreds of federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security to an intensive, weekslong hunt for noncitizen voters ahead of the November midterm elections — despite decades of evidence showing such fraud is vanishingly rare. The operation, which critics call a "nakedly political fishing expedition," is pulling agents from investigations into human trafficking and terrorism.

WASHINGTON – With less than two months until the 2026 midterm elections, the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up a nationwide effort to scour voter rolls for immigrants who are ineligible to vote — an initiative that has alarmed election officials, civil rights groups, and former DHS officials who warn the agency is being weaponized for political purposes .

According to internal documents and training videos reviewed by The New York Times, agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that typically handles drug smuggling and human trafficking cases — have been reassigned to look for voter fraud across at least nine states, including California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, and Washington .

The operation, internally dubbed the "Unlawful Voter Initiative," involves comparing state-level voter rolls with federal databases to identify potential noncitizen voters. Agents are using personally identifiable information — including dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers — to look up individual voters on state election websites. In some cases, investigators are effectively posing as individual voters by plugging their personal information into public-facing sites that are meant for individual use .

"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 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official from the Biden administration .

‘The Light Is Blinking Red’

The timing of the operation has drawn particular scrutiny. As CNN noted, the federal government typically avoids such "overt" investigatory actions so close to an election, precisely because mere allegations that haven't been thoroughly examined could influence the outcome .

"When it comes to Trump and alleged voter fraud, that's a feature rather than a bug," CNN's analysis concluded .

The administration has claimed it uncovered tens of thousands of potential noncitizens on voter rolls. In July, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the department had identified 250,000 suspected noncitizens registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada, and another 28,000 suspected noncitizens plus 400,000 deceased people on voter rolls across 23 states .

But federal prosecutors have only charged 41 people with illegally voting, according to a recent ProPublica investigation . The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has documented only roughly 100 instances of noncitizen voting over a quarter-century .

States in the Dark

Election officials in several targeted states said they learned of the surge from media reports, not from DHS itself.

"Voters here are already afraid," said Connecticut Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat. "Our office has not been contacted by the Department of Homeland Security about any intent to investigate here" .

In Washington state, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs called the operation "another attempt by the federal government to cause chaos and confusion ahead of the midterms" .

In Nevada, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar's office said it had not received any information about the investigation. "The Trump Administration is relentless in their efforts to cause doubt into the integrity of our elections," the office said. "The more chaos and confusion they cause now will lead to more voters choosing not to participate" .

The Data Problem: False Positives and Flawed Methodology

Critics say the administration's methodology is deeply flawed. UCLA Voting Rights Project data scientist Michael Rios said that comparing databases without unique identifiers — as DHS appears to be doing — inevitably produces false positives .

"Names can be misspelled, they can be shortened, they change after marriage, they can be entered differently between databases," Rios said. "Unless databases have a unique identifier to merge them by, a similar name, birthdate, or address cannot establish that two records represent the same person" .

The Brennan Center for Justice, which has studied election fraud claims for years, has described noncitizen voting as "vanishingly rare." In 2016, election officials overseeing 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions referred only an estimated 30 suspected cases for further investigation .

ICE at Polling Sites?

The DHS surge has also raised concerns that immigration agents could appear at polling places — a move that civil rights groups warn would constitute illegal voter intimidation.

Democrats have raised the alarm about comments from Trump allies calling for the deployment of ICE officers to polling places. Speaking to reporters in New York City, Secretary Mullin provided some details about what operations could see immigration agents enter polling sites.

"The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we're serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down," Mullin said .

However, Mullin also said that reports of specific undocumented immigrants at a location could be a reason for ICE to deploy .

Voting rights groups have warned that even a single incident of federal agents at a polling site could suppress turnout nationwide. The nonpartisan group Protect Democracy noted that using armed federal agents to intimidate voters is prohibited by federal law .

A ‘Failed Hunt’

A ProPublica investigation published this week revealed internal turmoil within HSI over the voter fraud initiative. An agency official named James Salisbury, a Trump political appointee, has overseen the unprecedented reassignment of more than 6,000 agents to immigration enforcement and voter fraud investigations .

One HSI staffer described the effort to identify noncitizen voters as "a little insane" — both unreliable and improper — and noted that using public voter rolls without unique identifiers would produce an "ungodly" number of false positives .

Meanwhile, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) filed a lawsuit this week against DHS, Secretary Mullin, and Attorney General Todd Blanche, alleging the federal government is illegally targeting naturalized citizens to prevent them from exercising their legal right to vote .

"Naturalized citizens are Americans. They took the oath. They earned their citizenship, and they have the same rights as every other American citizen," said CHIRLA executive director Angelica Salas .

The story is developing. The 2026 midterm elections are less than two months away, and the legal battles over the DHS operation are only beginning.