A whistleblower claimed a Department of Homeland Security effort to investigate voter fraud violated state laws, a charge the agency denies.
On Monday, Senate Democrats announced their reveal of a whistleblower complaint regarding a DHS effort to investigate voter fraud. According to the whistleblower, DHS had directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers to violate state laws as part of its “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” which seeks to gather evidence about voter fraud.
The complaint, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) claimed, said DHS forced its agents to use “illegal procedures and questionable data to identify purported ‘unlawful voters,’ and create federal law enforcement records against them, including naturalized U.S. citizens.”
Among the illegal procedures was an alleged directive to use personal information acquired from DHS data to lie on state voter registration websites, falsely claiming that they were either a voter or acting with their authorization to access sensitive data.
“Donald Trump and his Administration are obsessed with election conspiracy theories and operate under the wrong assumption that they are above the law — they are not,” Padilla said. “The whistleblower’s disclosure outlines shocking allegations of unlawful and unethical conduct that includes potentially thousands of violations of state law and the use of highly questionable data, which they refer to as ‘supplemental magic’ to falsely flag naturalized U.S. citizens as ineligible voters in federal law enforcement records.”
In response to an inquiry from the Washington Examiner, a DHS spokesperson denied the claim wholesale.
“The only magic being performed here is the media conjuring controversy out of commonplace law enforcement,” they said.
“Far from being rushed or untrained, these investigative efforts are conducted diligently and professionally. Identification and investigation of aliens who vote in our elections provides an essential guarantee in the authenticity of our election results. There is no quota on criminality. DHS will pursue each and every illegal voter to the fullest extent of the law,” the spokesperson added.
As for how the data was compiled, they said the agency “accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”
DHS pointed to some of the successful busts from the voter fraud investigation, including the uncovering of Mauritanian illegal immigrant Mahady Sacko, who had illegally voted in seven federal elections since 2008, including the 2024 elections.
The 30-page whistleblower complaint was released by Padilla and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Monday.
“The Department of Homeland Security is sending hundreds of officers who should be focused on our security on a wild goose chase to prove Trump’s long-debunked election conspiracy theories — and DHS is telling officers to lie to do it. This new DHS initiative is nothing more than an unlawful order by the government to silence the voices of Americans,” Schumer said in a statement.
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“These allegations are especially alarming because they come just weeks before the November 2026 midterm elections. The Administration is publicly asserting, without evidence, that large numbers of noncitizens are unlawfully registered to vote and deploying federal law enforcement resources to investigate those claims,” a letter from Democratic senators said, claiming that the faulty data could disenfranchise eligible voters and violate voting rights.
Padilla and Schumer demanded that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph Edlow halt the voter fraud investigation and explain their activities to Congress.