Armed and in uniform, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about their immigration status — and to inquire if they have registered to vote or cast votes in past elections, a CBS News Investigation has found.
The operation is part of an effort to root out potential noncitizen voters ahead of the midterms. DHS has alleged that there could be as many as 250,000 citizens illegally registered to vote, although election experts have disputed the accuracy of this figure. Just 156 people have been charged with voting-fraud related offenses since the beginning of the Trump administration, according to the Department of Justice. There are 227 million registered voters in the U.S.
Critics say that sending armed federal agents to the doors of U.S. residents could be intimidating for legal voters.
"What we're seeing now is the federal government is inserting itself into the state process for verifying their voter roles in an unprecedented way," said Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a left-leaning advocacy group that is suing the federal agency over the door-knocking campaign. "And they are doing it in a way that seems maximally designed to scare lawful voters from participating."
The home visits ramped up in September, in the thick of the midterm campaign season, and continued over the past weekend. The Justice Department announced Monday that Homeland Security agents in California arrested more than 20 people, all of them green card holders, on allegations they had illegally registered or cast a vote.
As part of that roundup, dozens of federal agents descended on the residence of a 72-year-old man from Belize, who was taken from his home in his pajamas and arrested on charges he allegedly voted illegally in the past four elections.
"HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," said a DHS spokesperson. "Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders."
Eric Balliet, a former Homeland Security Investigations agent, said the door-knocking operation is a significant departure from traditional law enforcement activities.
"In my 23 years with HSI, I never engaged in or was aware of any incident of initiative that sent Special Agents to private residences to verify the eligibility of voters," Balliet said, who served in the federal government under multiple administrations.
In June, the DHS directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to assist in deportations of alleged noncitizen voters. Homeland Security Investigations, the agency conducting the at-home visits, is one of the enforcement arms of ICE and typically focuses on criminal cross border investigations like child exploitation, drug smuggling and money laundering.
Months later after the announcement, hundreds of agents were pulled off their cases and assigned to track down alleged noncitizen voters as part of a "surge" initiative, according to internal documents reviewed by CBS News. The directive, first reported by CNN, describes a "Criminal Voter Fraud " initiative that includes "field reviews" in at least six states including California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.
Photos and videos posted on X show agents from Homeland Security Investigations, some of whom are carrying firearms, approaching houses and knocking on doors, under captions like, "AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE FOR AMERICANS."
One photo from Kansas City HSI's account shows four agents at the door of a woman standing on her porch holding a child's hand.
The woman is identified in a Department of Justice press release as Mariana Alexandra Dewey, a Peruvian national who was charged with four counts of voter-fraud related crimes including illegally casting a ballot in the 2024 election. Her case has not yet been heard. Her lawyer declined to respond to CBS News' request for comment.
For civil rights advocates, the show of force has sparked concerns about the chilling effect it could have on legal voters.
"It is sending the signal to a much broader community, do not show up at the polls. Do not vote," said Dr. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University.
"And so if you are somebody who has registered to vote and you're a naturalized citizen, what you see in that community is that — because this is not a regime that makes those discernments — that you're gonna stay away from the voting booth."
A DHS spokesperson said, "DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens… Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear."
In one video, agents are filmed holding a document that says, "Target List."
That list can be far reaching, said a HSI agent familiar with the initiative who asked to speak anonymously. DHS pulls from internal databases, voter rolls, and other datasets. Then employees attempt to match names against citizenship data provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS.
In September, a USCIS whistleblower said that employees were asked to review the voter information of tens of thousands of individuals across the country, including citizens. Employees were given quotas to investigate 40 subjects a day, which is a rate of roughly 12 minutes per subject.
DHS has defended the data matching program and the work USCIS has done to identify potential noncitizen voters.
"Far from being rushed or untrained, these investigative efforts are conducted diligently and professionally," said a DHS spokesperson. "There is no quota on criminality. DHS will pursue each and every illegal voter to the fullest extent of the law ."
"There's every reason to expect that there are many, many more false positives in these lists," said Marsden.
She noted that Homeland Security officials initially said they had identified nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada's voter rolls, but ultimately they were unable to provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter.