USA14 September, 20263 min read
DHS Ordered USCIS Officers to Unlawfully Access California Voter Records, Whistleblower Alleges
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DHS allegedly directed USCIS officers to unlawfully access state voter records. Officers were told to misrepresent themselves as voters on state election websites.
Unlawful Voter Initiative
A federal whistleblower alleged that agents of the Department of Homeland Security were ordered to unlawfully access state voting records as part of the department’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” including directing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers to misrepresent themselves as voters on state election agency websites.
Democracy Defenders Fund produced a report based on the whistleblower’s account and it was included in a letter sent to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Sunday.
The whistleblower said USCIS directed its Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) branch to search dozens of people’s registration and voting records, and that officers were told to move forward even after they raised concerns about violating state laws.
The allegations also said the whistleblower’s claim involved DHS using data that USCIS says is incomplete and unreliable to investigate people it believes illegally registered or voted, and that leadership ordered officers to create federal law enforcement records called TECS records.
Sen. Padilla warned that USCIS’s directive to its agents will likely result in “thousands of violations of state laws,” while the report described the initiative as a sweeping search for voting fraud ahead of the November elections.
Senators demand halt
Schumer said in an interview, “This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” as AlterNet described the operation as a Trump administration effort that has reportedly deployed hundreds of federal agents to search voter-registration records. The New York Times reported that the whistle-blower’s account said authorities required agents to examine at least 40 voters each day, and that the effort relied on questionable data that “has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.” The New York Times also said the whistle-blower report was provided to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla and offered an inside view of what DHS calls the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.”
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the senators sent a letter to Markwayne Mullin demanding the operation be halted and seeking answers to a dozen specific questions. AlterNet added that the whistleblower said agents were required to complete at least 40 reviews in eight hours, giving them little time to search each voter’s citizenship and voting history.
Data, quotas, and risk
The Desert Sun said the allegations center on DHS’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” and described the whistleblower’s claim that DHS leadership instructed immigration and fraud investigators to access voter registration records using personal information even in states where access is limited to individual voters or their authorized representatives. It reported that California’s voter lookup tools require identifying information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number, while Virginia explicitly limits use of certain voter-record search tools to individual voters. The whistleblower disclosure also alleged that DHS officials pressured employees to create federal law enforcement records based on data the investigators believed was incomplete, inconsistent, or unreliable, and that the initiative potentially affected “hundreds of thousands of voter records.”
News Channel 3-12 (KEYT) quoted a letter signed by Senators Padilla and Schumer describing “potentially thousands of violations of state law” and said the whistleblower alleged USCIS was directing employees to ignore the law in search of voters’ personal information. The same KEYT report said the whistleblower alleged officers were told in August of 2026 to stop and work on the new initiative after completing a single one-hour-and-forty-five minute training video and were tasked with completing quotas to review at least 40 people per day as well as that the full review was expected to be completed by September 12.