The Department of Homeland Security opened a coordinated voter fraud investigation across nine states this week, and Democratic election officials are not taking the news well...
CNN reported that internal federal guidance directs Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to build criminal cases against people suspected of illegally registering or voting. The effort is described as a "coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative" and will run from early September through mid-October.
Agents began work Tuesday in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut.
The operation targets noncitizens who registered or cast ballots, including immigrants accused of voting before they naturalized. DHS has directed investigators to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which means a noncitizen caught voting faces more than a fine. Criminal charges, a denied citizenship application and deportation are all on the table.
The enforcement push runs through DHS's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which lets states cross-check voter rolls against federal citizenship and immigration records. Mullin announced in July that states seeking DHS election-related grants must run their rolls through SAVE as a condition of funding.
"Working with Secretary Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory," Mullin said.
"The machines have to be secured, and your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed. We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting."
Skeptics might ask whether any of this produces actual prosecutions. It has. Recent federal cases include a Honduran illegal alien arrested for voting in seven federal elections dating back to 2008, a Mexican national who pleaded guilty after falsely claiming citizenship, an Australian national arrested for voting in multiple federal elections, a Chinese national facing voter fraud charges and an illegal alien sentenced for voting under a stolen identity for more than two decades.
While Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office said it would comply with the investigation, officials in the targeted Democratic-run states denounced the operation almost immediately.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber's office called the operation part of "a broader effort to intimidate Californians" and dismissed DHS's findings as "seemingly baseless."
Connecticut Democratic Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas struck a more careful tone, saying she welcomed "any investigation into election malfeasance" while hoping the intent was to find wrongdoing rather than "create chaos."
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said he learned about the probe from media reports and complained DHS never contacted his office. "It's troubling that Homeland Security is wasting taxpayer dollars investigating a phenomenon we know to be false," Hobbs said, calling the operation "another attempt by the federal government to cause chaos and confusion ahead of the midterms."
Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers called the probe "a joke" and told Trump to "stay out of it because voting is a state issue and not a federal issue."
New Jersey offers the cleanest test case of the whole fight. The Trump administration identified at least 35,000 potential noncitizen registered voters in the state. In July, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill tried to get ahead of the story by admitting the state had 6,600 registered noncitizen voters herself. But then she refused to hand voter data over to the Trump administration.
"While ICE Homeland Security Investigations is not able to comment on any active investigations, HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. "Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences—including criminal charges and deportation."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has turned his department into the tip of the spear for President Trump's election integrity push, and he has done it with numbers Democrats would prefer nobody repeat. DHS has flagged more than 24,000 potential noncitizens on voter rolls nationwide since April of last year, and Mullin said an audit of four states alone, California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, turned up more than 250,000 potential noncitizen registrations.
"One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts, is they don't lie," Mullin told reporters, warning that election officials who fail to secure the midterms could face fines or jail time.