What the investigation found
Armed federal agents in uniform from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status and whether they have registered to vote or cast ballots in past elections, according to a CBS News investigation. The effort is described as part of a push to identify potential noncitizen voters before the midterms.
The visits ramped up in September, in the middle of campaign season, and continued over the past weekend, CBS News reported. Internal documents the network reviewed describe a "Criminal Voter Fraud" initiative, first reported by CNN, that includes "field reviews" in at least six states: California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
Photos and videos posted on X show Homeland Security Investigations agents, some carrying firearms, approaching homes under captions such as "AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE FOR AMERICANS." In one video, agents hold a document labeled "Target List."
Arrests and the scale of the problem
The Justice Department announced Monday that Homeland Security agents in California had arrested more than 20 people, all of them green card holders, on allegations that they illegally registered or voted. In one case, dozens of agents went to the home of a 72-year-old man from Belize, who was taken from his residence in his pajamas and charged with allegedly voting illegally in the past four elections.
In Kansas City, a photo from the local HSI account shows four agents at the door of a woman holding a child's hand. A Justice Department press release identifies her as Mariana Alexandra Dewey, a Peruvian national charged with four counts of voter-fraud-related crimes, including illegally casting a ballot in 2024. Her case has not yet been heard, and her lawyer declined to comment to CBS News.
DHS has alleged there could be as many as 250,000 noncitizens illegally registered to vote, though election experts dispute that figure, CBS News reported. According to the Justice Department, just 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud-related offenses since the start of the Trump administration. The country has 227 million registered voters.
How targets are identified
An HSI agent familiar with the initiative, who spoke anonymously, told CBS News the target list can be far reaching. DHS draws on internal databases, voter rolls and other datasets, then employees try to match names against citizenship data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
In September, a USCIS whistleblower said employees had been asked to review voter information for tens of thousands of people nationwide, including citizens, and were given quotas of 40 subjects a day, roughly 12 minutes each. A DHS spokesperson said the efforts are conducted "diligently and professionally" and that there is "no quota on criminality."
Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, said she expects "many, many more false positives" on such lists. She noted that DHS officials initially said they had found nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls but ultimately could not provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter.
Criticism and the government's response
Protect Democracy, which CBS News describes as a left-leaning advocacy group, is suing the agency over the campaign. Marsden said the federal government is inserting itself into state voter-verification processes "in an unprecedented way" and doing so in a manner "maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating."
Eric Balliet, a former HSI agent who served under multiple administrations, said that in 23 years he never knew of an initiative sending agents to private homes to verify voter eligibility. HSI typically focuses on cross-border criminal cases such as child exploitation, drug smuggling and money laundering. In June, DHS directed ICE to help deport alleged noncitizen voters, and months later hundreds of agents were reassigned to the effort, according to the internal documents.
Carol Anderson, an Emory University professor of African American Studies, warned the visits send a signal to a broader community not to vote, including naturalized citizens. A DHS spokesperson said HSI is "actively rooting out and investigating election fraud" and that people who are here legally and not breaking other laws "have nothing to fear."
