ICE Reviewed Tens of Millions of Voter Records Looking for Noncitizen Voters, Records Show

The Department of Homeland Security’s sweeping election-fraud operation has drawn on tens of millions of records, scrutinized dozens of nonprofit voter-registration groups and considered deploying undercover agents to investigate organizations suspected of helping noncitizens register to vote, according to newly obtained internal documents.

The records, released on Wednesday by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, offer a detailed look inside one arm of the Trump administration’s escalating election-integrity campaign, which has marshaled federal investigators, immigration databases and voter records in an effort to identify noncitizens suspected of illegally registering or voting.

Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative division of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, described the undertaking as a phased national initiative involving voter-roll acquisition, data analysis, investigative leads and field investigations.

The operation drew on extraordinarily large pools of data. A June 1 HSI report said investigators had 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, had obtained through what the report called “independent sources of information.” The document does not identify those independent sources or make clear whether the two datasets contained unique individuals. HSI said the data was being further analyzed to identify investigative targets.

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The documents also show that investigators were looking well beyond individual suspected voters. An internal comparison said HSI was adopting 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.

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