DHS's 'Unlawful Voter Initiative' May Break State Laws, Whistleblower Says

A whistleblower disclosure released Monday by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla alleges DHS's "Unlawful Voter Initiative" requires USCIS employees to misrepresent themselves on state voter-lookup tools, likely violating state laws, and to create federal law-enforcement records on voters using unreliable data. Staffers in nine states were pulled from other duties in late August, given under two hours of training, and told to run DHS-provided lists through state voter systems to flag "unlawful voters," reviewing roughly 40 people a day with about 12 minutes each.

The New York Times first reported the initiative in early September; the whistleblower account adds that agents were told to proceed with lookups even after raising liability concerns, and that citizens could be wrongly flagged since DHS data often differs from state records. Research has repeatedly found noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

Schumer and Padilla have demanded DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin halt the initiative. DHS has not responded to the whistleblower account but has defended similar data-matching efforts as necessary "to secure our elections."