Armed and in uniform, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status — and to inquire if they have registered to vote or cast votes in past elections, a CBS News investigation has found.
The operation is part of an effort to root out potential noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. DHS has alleged that there could be as many as 250,000 citizens illegally registered to vote, although election experts have disputed the accuracy of this figure. Just 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud related offenses since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to the Justice Department. There are 227 million registered voters in the US.
The Door-Knocking Campaign
The home visits ramped up in September, in the thick of the midterm campaign season, and continued over the past weekend. The Justice Department announced Monday that Homeland Security agents in California arrested more than 20 people, all of them green card holders, on allegations they had illegally registered or cast a vote.
As part of that roundup, dozens of federal agents descended on the residence of a 72-year-old man from Belize, who was taken from his home in his pajamas and arrested on charges he allegedly voted illegally in the past four elections.
“HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” said a DHS spokesperson. “Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders.”
The Chilling Effect
Critics say sending armed federal agents to the doors of US residents could be intimidating for legal voters. “What we’re seeing now is the federal government is inserting itself into the state process for verifying their voter roles in an unprecedented way,” said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group suing the agency over the door-knocking campaign. “And they are doing it in a way that seems maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating.”
Eric Balliet, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent, said the door-knocking operation is a significant departure from traditional law enforcement activities. “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 Target List
Months after the DHS directive, hundreds of agents were pulled off their cases and assigned to track down alleged noncitizen voters as part of a “surge” initiative, according to internal documents reviewed by CBS News. The directive describes a “Criminal Voter Fraud” initiative that includes “field reviews” in at least six states, including California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin.
In September, a USCIS whistleblower said employees were asked to review the voter information of tens of thousands of individuals across the country, including citizens. Employees were given quotas to investigate 40 subjects a day, which is a rate of roughly 12 minutes per subject.
DHS has defended the data matching program. “There is no quota on criminality. DHS will pursue each and every illegal voter to the fullest extent of the law,” a spokesperson said.
The False Positives
Marsden noted that Homeland Security officials initially said they had identified nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls, but ultimately they were unable to provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter.
“There’s every reason to expect that there are many, many more false positives in these lists,” she said.
For civil rights advocates, the show of force has sparked concerns about the chilling effect it could have on legal voters. “It is sending the signal to a much broader community: do not show up at the polls. Do not vote,” said Dr. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University.
The Bottom Line
Armed federal agents have been knocking on doors in at least six states to question residents about their immigration status and voting history. The operation is part of the Trump administration’s effort to root out noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. Critics say the door-knocking is intimidating legal voters and point to the tiny number of actual fraud cases — just 156 charged out of 227 million registered voters. DHS says it is restoring election integrity. Civil rights advocates say it is voter intimidation.
My Opinion
The Department of Homeland Security says it is protecting election integrity. But there is no election integrity crisis. Just 156 people have been charged with voting fraud since Trump took office out of 227 million registered voters. That is not a crisis. That is a rounding error.
What is happening is something else entirely. Armed federal agents are knocking on doors in six states, asking people about their citizenship and their voting history. They are pulling names from databases and matching them against citizenship records with quotas of 40 subjects a day. Twelve minutes per person. In Nevada, they claimed 16,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls. They could not produce evidence of a single one.
