President Donald Trump has unleashed hundreds of federal agents, who have been pulled from criminal investigations, to hunt for suspected noncitizen voters in an armed operation across multiple states, according to internal Homeland Security records.
The documents describe a “Criminal Voter Fraud” initiative, and images and videos have shown Homeland Security Investigations agents going to homes with guns. HSI is an agency that typically investigates drug smuggling, money laundering and child exploitation cases.
According to CBS, uniformed agents knocked on doors, asking residents about their voter registration, previous election participation, and citizenship. Per the report, at least six states were included in “field reviews,” including California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
HSI shared several images of agents who are armed, knocking on doors with the following caption: “HSI in Northern California will investigate any allegations of noncitizen voting and is committed to ensuring the enforcement of federal election law.”
A 23-year HSI veteran, Eric Balliet, told CBS that the operation is unprecedented in this time in the federal agency.
“In my 23 years with HSI, I never engaged in or was aware of any incident of initiative that sent Special Agents to private residences to verify the eligibility of voters,” Balliet said.
The door-knocking campaign expanded as the November elections closed in September and continued in October.
Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla received information from a whistleblower in September that described hundreds of immigration-service employees being told to look into voter information, including that of American citizens.
According to the disclosure, employees only received one hour and 45 minutes of training before being handed 40 cases per day, describing what seems like a frantic effort. They also had about 12 minutes to examine each person’s voting status.
Per CBS, a video shows agents holding a document that says, “Target List.” A HSI agent told the network that DHS is taking information from internal databases, voter rolls, and other unspecified data sets.
They then take that data and try to match the names against a citizenship registration from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
After allegations of massive voter fraud in California, the Justice Department announced Monday that it charged 28 foreign nationals in the state with offenses involving alleged unlawful voting, fraudulent registration, or related false statements. Eleven were arrested that day, and those charged represent just 0.0001 percent of California’s registered voters.
Prosecutors allege that some defendants also misrepresented their voting histories on U.S. citizenship applications.
DHS has defended its operations, stating that they are conducted legally and its goal is to protect election integrity.
A lawyer for Protect Democracy, Jessica Marsden, accused DHS of attempting to “scare lawful voters from participating.”
DHS has claimed that as many as 250,000 noncitizens may be unlawfully registered nationwide, but so far they have investigated just 156 people since Trump returned to office.