Exclusive: DHS plans to launch voter fraud investigation surge Tuesday

By Priscilla Alvarez, Tierney Sneed, Gabe Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — The Department of Homeland Security is planning a surge in its efforts to investigate voter fraud in select states starting Tuesday, according to internal federal guidance reviewed by CNN.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has accelerated efforts to make the department a central force in President Donald Trump’s hunt for purported widespread election fraud. DHS has pushed states to share their voter rolls for audit and has vowed to withhold grant funding from those that refuse to adopt a broader set of election reforms.

The department has leaned for investigative work on one of its agencies — Homeland Security Investigations — an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that typically tackles major crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling and child exploitation. The agency has already surged an unprecedented number of agents to work on cases, including chasing down voter histories of people believed to be noncitizens who may have illegally voted or registered to vote.

Experts say there is no evidence that widespread voter fraud has occurred in recent elections.

Starting Tuesday, HSI is launching a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” the guidance says.

Offices in nine states are expected to take investigative action from early September to mid-October, according to the guidance. Those states include Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut.

The guidance’s reference to investigative steps is notable given the push comes as midterm elections get underway. Such “overt” investigatory actions while elections were approaching have historically been discouraged, under long-standing Justice Department policy limiting investigative actions could influence elections.

“Doing otherwise runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest,” the Justice Department manual says. “It may, however, often be appropriate, in consultation with the Public Integrity Section, to share information and allegations involving such matters with state or local authorities where an immediate need for overt measures exists.”

The DOJ formally rescinded the policy under the first Trump administration but still mostly abided by it, and it was reinstated under President Joe Biden.

But DHS, as a separate department, is not obligated to follow the policy, and the new guidance makes no reference to those timing concerns.

CNN reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Under the Trump administration, agents have, for example, been assigned to investigate whether naturalized US citizens registered or voted before becoming citizens, CNN previously reported. Another memo directed HSI agents to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin removal proceedings when a noncitizen is suspected of or linked to voter fraud.

Despite the dramatic shift of resources toward investigating election fraud, the administration has brought only a handful of prosecutions — mostly targeting cases of noncitizens voting or being unlawfully registered to vote.

Still, the administration has touted alleged election fraud arrests. Last week, the Justice Department announced that a Honduran national who was legally living in the United States had been arrested and charged with fraudulently registering to vote and falsely claiming to be a US citizen.

“Today’s arrest is the first of many to come,” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement.

Mullin, meanwhile, has positioned himself as a leading enforcer of Trump’s voter-fraud crackdown. Earlier this summer, his department announced an audit of public voter rolls had identified more than 250,000 registered noncitizens in just four states: California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada.

“One thing that I love about numbers, and I love about facts, is they don’t lie,” Mullin told reporters at the time, warning that election officials who fail to secure the midterms could face fines or even jail time.

But the numbers have, thus far, proved far less definitive than DHS initially suggested. The department publicly claimed it had found nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls. But behind closed doors, the department acknowledged to the state’s top election officials that it had “confirmed” just 185 of them, according to internal records reviewed by CNN. Another 6,200 were labeled “higher confidence matches” — but still required further vetting.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.