Agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been ordered to unlawfully access state voting records to carry out the department’s escalating elections-related probes, an anonymous federal whistleblower disclosed in a new report.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has directed its officers to misrepresent themselves as voters on state election agency websites while checking dozens of people’s registration and voting records, the whistleblower said.
Legal nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund produced a report based on the whistleblower’s account. It was then included in a letter Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) sent to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin Sunday.
The senators demanded that Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow immediately halt the searches and provide an urgent report to Congress on its activities.
USCIS’s directive to its agents will likely result in “thousands of violations of state laws,” Sen. Padilla warned in a release Monday.
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USCIS allegedly issued the order as part of the Trump administration’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” a sweeping search for voting fraud — specifically instances of noncitizens registering or casting a ballot — ahead of the November elections.
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