U.S. Senate Dems disclose Trump administration operation dug through state voter rolls

WASHINGTON (States Newsroom) — Department of Homeland Security officers may have broken state laws carrying out the Trump administration’s orders to find noncitizens voting illegally in federal elections, Democratic senators alleged Monday following a whistleblower complaint.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the whistleblower detailed the department’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” in which U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services immigration officers combed through state voter rolls, sometimes pretending to be the voter to access records.

U.S. citizens were also swept up in the efforts due to faulty data and pressure from top officials to meet a quota of five investigations per hour, or 12 minutes per inquiry, according to the whistleblower’s account. 

“We just got more proof of (President Donald) Trump’s vile schemes to rig our elections,” said Schumer, a New York Democrat. “A DHS whistleblower warns that the department is pulling hundreds, hundreds of federal agents from national security roles, and sending them on a wild goose chase. The goal: to try and prove Trump’s sad, tired and long debunked election conspiracy theories.”

The New York Times was the first to report the existence of the DHS operation.

California Sen. Alex Padilla, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration that oversees federal elections, said the president “will go to extraordinary lengths to try to interfere with the midterm elections.”

Padilla said the whistleblower came forward last week.

Padilla and Schumer called for DHS to shut down the operation. The department did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

“Donald Trump knows his record has been so bad,” Padilla said. “His only chance at keeping Republican majorities in Congress is to interfere with the elections.”

Noncitizens are not allowed to vote in federal elections, and cases are extremely rare. Some localities have passed laws to allow for noncitizen voting in local elections.

But the topic is a priority for the president, who has directed DHS to investigate voter rolls for illegal voting by noncitizens. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced two noncitizens from Kansas and Louisiana illegally voted in federal elections.

“Voter fraud is already a serious problem, but non-citizens voting is even worse,” Mullin said. “Every time a non-citizen casts a ballot, it steals a vote from an American citizen.”