U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were given access to voter files in two counties in Texas and North Carolina, according to an Axios news report.
Election officials from Forsyth County, North Carolina and Webb County, Texas, gave voter file information to agents from the ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit, as part of the Trump administration’s agenda to find instances of noncitizens voting.
There have been diminishingly few cases of noncitizens intentionally voting illegally, and no cases of this happening at a widespread level. However, President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted, without facts to back him up, that noncitizen voting is prevalent.
The dispatching of ICE agents to obtain personal voter files is the latest federal incursion into states’ and counties’ constitutional authority over managing elections. Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is also embroiled in an intrusive campaign to pry voter data from every U.S. state.
“Using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone,” said Dan McGrath, senior oversight counsel for the pro-voting legal organization Democracy Forward, in a statement to Axios.
Democracy Forward obtained emails from public record requests showing correspondence between the county election officials and ICE from May and November of last year.
HSI also requested voter information from Texas’s Secretary of State office in April, as did Department of Homeland Security (DHS) senior “election integrity” official Heather Honey, according to the emails Democracy Forward received.
Before joining DHS, Honey was an election conspiracy activist who unsuccessfully sought to overturn the 2020 election results to help Trump.
“HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” said a DHS spokesperson said in a statement.
At DHS, Honey has sought voter data from the DOJ to ferret for voter fraud. She told Axios that her agency “has engaged with every state secretary or chief election official.”
On June 9, DHS General Counsel James Percival instructed ICE to pursue stricter penalties for noncitizens found voting illegally, including deportation.
“Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy,” said Percival. “It must have consequences.”
