Daijiworld Media Network - Washington
Washington, Sep 24: The White House has directed federal agencies to accelerate reviews of voter rolls obtained from at least 47 US states as part of an unprecedented effort to identify noncitizens among registered voters ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) email reviewed by Reuters.
The DHS has deployed hundreds of officers from across the US security and immigration apparatus in recent months to examine voter rolls for possible evidence of voter fraud under its Unlawful Voter Initiative, current and former officials said.
A September 1 email from a DHS official to colleagues details the voter-roll review and indicates that the White House is closely directing the effort. It also shows that officials have struggled to meet targets set for the initiative.
The email said one DHS official had "offered to raise with the WH COS if we can't get forward progress", referring to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
The email also revealed that DHS is using information purchased from a commercial data broker to supplement sensitive voter information that is not contained in publicly available voter rolls. Officials and experts have warned that such data matching could result in US citizens being falsely flagged as noncitizen voters and potentially subjected to additional scrutiny or detention.
The review is the latest effort by President Donald Trump to substantiate his longstanding claim that noncitizen voting is widespread in US elections. Multiple studies and election audits have found little evidence of voting by noncitizens on a scale that could affect election outcomes.
Reuters reported in July that only 129 people had been charged under the federal "Voting by Aliens" statute since it was enacted in 1996. The Trump administration has charged at least 20 additional people under the statute in the months since.
Reuters also reported this week that states may have added more than 30,000 noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000 because of software glitches and clerical errors. It remains unclear how many of those individuals actually cast ballots, while experts said the number was too small relative to the roughly 170 million registered voters in the United States to affect elections.
The White House said in a statement that all cases of potential noncitizen voting would be pursued. DHS said its investigations were being conducted "diligently and professionally in accordance with the law" and described the effort as an "essential guarantee" of election integrity.
It remains unclear how DHS obtained the voter rolls from the 47 states cited in the September email.
Since returning to office last year, the Trump administration has sought unredacted voter rolls from nearly every state. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, at least 16 states have agreed to provide complete rolls without redactions, while most states have declined.
DHS appears to have relied on publicly available versions of voter rolls in some cases, with personal information such as driver's licence and Social Security numbers removed. The September email said the agency had "enriched" the redacted records using information purchased from Accurint, a private data service that collects and sells personal information.
LexisNexis, which owns Accurint, declined to comment.
Federal investigators are matching the expanded voter-roll data against records held by several government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the State Department and the Social Security Administration, the email showed.
"We have 1,620 cases moving right now that are under investigation," DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News on Saturday, adding that the number was increasing daily.
However, the review has encountered difficulties. Some voter records obtained by DHS lacked key information such as year of birth, making it difficult to match individuals across government databases.
A US official said leads sent to agents in recent weeks frequently included false positives, including US citizens whose names were similar to those of immigrants. Another person familiar with the operation said US citizens born abroad had also been mistakenly included.
The DHS email said the agency had only "some degree of confidence" that people flagged through the review were noncitizens who had "registered to vote and/or voted".
Kerry Doyle, a former DHS deputy general counsel, said being flagged could have significant consequences, including additional scrutiny during air travel and potential complications for people seeking naturalisation.
"When there is a flag in the system, it's very difficult to fix it. It totally upends your life," Doyle said.
At USCIS, hundreds of fraud-detection and national-security officers were reassigned to the voter-roll review for at least three weeks beginning in August, according to three people familiar with the matter.
One person said officers were given a target of vetting five names per hour, although the target was rarely achieved.
Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE that normally handles cases involving crimes such as human trafficking and cross-border offences, was also instructed to increase resources to determine whether potential noncitizens could face charges for illegal voting, a US official said.
Following a late-August call with the White House, DHS officials held a meeting in which, according to the email, "the ICE team appeared both unaware of what their leadership had committed to and also indicated they weren't sure they could actually execute, particularly at the volume being sought."
Several states have questioned the administration's claims about the scale of noncitizen voting.
In Nevada, DHS said in July that it had identified nearly 16,000 potential noncitizens on the state's voter rolls. After state officials sought evidence, DHS said the figure was preliminary and had verified only 185 cases, according to the Nevada secretary of state's office.
The office said DHS declined to provide additional information requested by the state to verify the initial figure.