Internal documents released Wednesday provide detailed insight into the Department of Homeland Security's wide-ranging election-fraud investigation, which has drawn on tens of millions of voter records and targeted dozens of nonprofit voter-registration organizations, according to records obtained and released by the advocacy group Democracy Forward.
The 166-page collection of internal documents shows the scope of what Homeland Security Investigations—the investigative division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—described as a phased national initiative involving voter-roll acquisition, data analysis, investigative leads, and field investigations. According to a June 1 HSI report, investigators ingested 50.6 million records from a Justice Department dataset and another 48.4 million records that Heather Honey, a senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, obtained through what the report called "independent sources of information." The documents do not identify those sources, though the data may include public voter lists from California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada that DHS purchased and analyzed around that time.
The operation extended beyond individual voter records. Documents show that HSI adopted what investigators called a "network-based investigative approach, prioritizing organization and facilitation analysis over individual leads." Investigators reviewed dozens of nonprofits and voter-registration organizations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other states, and examined organizations linked to an Ohio company suspected by investigators of voter-registration fraud. The documents also indicate that the administration considered deploying undercover agents to investigate organizations suspected of helping noncitizens register to vote, though specific details about whether this occurred are not provided in the released records.
In July, Homeland Security Secretary Mullin announced that the department found roughly 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states—California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Officials in those states have repeatedly challenged this figure. The department's 50 million Justice Department records may include unredacted voter lists voluntarily handed over by more than a dozen Republican-led states in the months prior, according to the documents. The Justice Department has separately sued 30 other states to force them to share their unredacted voter rolls for audit.
The documents suggest that the Trump administration explored using software products from Palantir, a controversial data-analysis company, to review voter rolls. Multiple agency documents reference plans to ingest state voter-roll data into a Palantir tool known as ELITE, which the company's website describes as a "data integration" tool designed for "identifying the location of known foreign nationals who meet criteria for removal." However, a Palantir spokesperson told CNN that "voter roll data has never been integrated into ELITE."
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson defended the operation, saying: "DHS has been incredibly transparent about the acquisition and the analysis of publicly available voter files conducted by the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate of USCIS. DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of US citizens."
Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, offered a contrasting perspective. "It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters, as opposed to the way things are supposed to function in a democracy where voters pick their leaders," Perryman said in a statement. According to a separate report, noncitizen voting remains extremely rare.
