ICE Agents Were Given Access to Local Voter Files As Trump Perpetuates Myth of Non-Citizen Voting

In the Trump administration’s latest effort to meddle in election administration, investigate baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and sow doubt in the country’s election system ahead of the midterms, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators were reportedly granted access to voter files in counties in Texas and North Carolina.

Election officials in Forsyth County in North Carolina and Webb County in Texas handed over individual voter files — which can include things like registration history, drivers license numbers, addresses, dates of birth, among other information — to ICE investigators, Axios was first to report. It’s unclear what exactly agents were after, but it is in line with the administration’s efforts to perpetuate the false narrative that non-citizens are voting en masse in U.S. elections.

According to emails obtained by the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward and then shared with Axios, agents from the Homeland Security Investigation (HSI), an investigative unit within ICE, asked county officials in Texas for voter files last month. And in November, HSI agents made similar requests to election officials for information on two voters in Forsyth County, North Carolina. 

Non-citizen voting has been a particular area of fixation for Republicans for years now, but instances of non-citizen voting are exceedingly rare and there is zero evidence to support the conspiracy theory that it’s happening en masse to help Democrats win elections, as President Trump and his allies have claimed. It’s a narrative that has been used by Trump and his allies to drum up fear about the safety and security of our election system and manufacture hysteria about voter fraud that simply does not exist. They’ve also used it to try to pass legislation that would disenfranchise millions. 

“Using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone. … Americans have a right to understand the full scope of the administration’s actions,” Democracy Forward Senior Oversight Counsel Dan McGrath told Axios. 

“I can’t say whether this is some kind of very, very targeted research, or evidence gathering on a particular incident, but we know what they’re going to find,” David Becker, executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told TPM. “We’re gonna find that there’s absolutely no basis to believe that there’s widespread voter fraud by non-citizens.”

“In fact, we know the opposite is true,” Becker added. “We know that our systems that are currently in place are doing a very good job of making sure only eligible voters can vote.”

If there were legitimate concerns about non-citizens voting, HSI would be the agency to look into it, but non-citizen voting is rare and is not a pressing issue, a former President Biden administration DHS official told TPM. 

Heather Honey, an election denier and activist who now holds an election security role at DHS, was in direct contact with the Texas secretary of state’s office, according to the emails that Democracy Forward obtained and shared with Axios. 

“DHS routinely works with our state and local partners including the state of Texas. In this case, we wanted to discuss how DHS could best support the SOS office and collaborate on shared goals,” Honey told Axios, also telling the outlet that she has been in contact with “every state secretary or chief election official.” 

Alongside this latest campaign to obtain voter files from the states, this time through ICE agents, the Trump administration has been, for months now, also publicly musing about whether ICE agents will be present at polling places this fall. The administration has refused to rule out the possibility, but has not said outright what its plans are. 

In March, current DHS Secretary and former Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said that he may order ICE agents to be deployed at polling places to address a “specific threat,” but not for “intimidation.”

And more recently, on Sunday, Mullin refused to rule out the possibility of deploying ICE agents at polling places. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” he said, again, that ICE agents would be deployed if a “threat arises.”