DHS whistleblower describes sweeping effort to find non-citizen voters using dubious data

Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images/File

The Department of Homeland Security is using legally questionable tactics and relying on unreliable data to investigate non-citizen voting, a whistleblower alleged in a report released by top Senate Democrats Monday.

The disclosures prompted accusations by Democrats and voter advocates of a sweeping dragnet that could ensnare eligible voters, as President Donald Trump has made finding proof of mass non-citizen voting — shown in studies to be exceedingly rare — a top priority of his administration.

Much of the whistleblower’s disclosures focused on training materials for DHS agents tasked with carrying out an investigatory effort known as the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.”

The effort is looking at voter records of “50 states and is targeted at up to hundreds of thousands of individuals,” lawyers for the whistleblower said in the report. Officers were ordered to investigate noncitizens as well as naturalized US citizens who may have registered or voted before they were naturalized.

After the late August launch of program, DHS agents working in a fraud detection unit of US Citizenship and Immigration Services were given just a few weeks to sift through the voter records of thousands of individuals and create law enforcement files known as TECS records for individuals determined to have voted unlawfully.

The whistleblower report alleges that the agents are being kept in the dark about the sources of some of the data being used in the review, and the process leads to individuals being tagged as unlawful voters even if the agent “reasonably believes that the DHS source data is not reliable enough to justify creating a TECS record.”

The flag could have implications for those individuals in their dealings with the government going forward, setting them up for increased screenings when crossing the border and more investigation by DHS. But Democrats alleged Monday that the initiative demonstrates Trump’s broader goal to sow doubt about elections, particularly as Democrats are expecting to win back control of at least one chamber of Congress this fall.

“The truth is, this has nothing to do with protecting the integrity of our elections,” California Sen. Alex Padilla said at a press conference Monday. “That’s just a pretext. It’s about the potential of using manufactured evidence to intimidate voters, to disenfranchise eligible Americans and even undermine or challenge this November’s election results, a classic Trump play.”

CNN has reached out to DHS for comment on the whistleblower report.

The Trump administration has broadly defended its efforts by saying its goal is to ensure that only people legally entitled to cast ballots do so.

The training materials instructed agents to use state voter registration portals to obtain information about their targets, instructing the agents — potentially in violation of state law — to pose as the voters to view their voter records. When agents raised concerns that using the state portals in that way could be illegal, they were told by superiors that they were “not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented,” according to the report.

“If this effort is truly legal, then why does DHS leadership have to promise its officers that they’re not going to be held liable? That says a lot,” Padilla said.

Officers have been given a quota to review at least 40 people per day, forcing them to confirm their identity, citizenship, and voting and registration record in a matter of minutes — a pace that compounds the risk that lawful voters will be investigated by mistake, the whistleblower complaint argued.

On Sunday, Senate Democrats sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, demanding he cease the operation. The use of the state portals was first reported by the New York Times in early September.

The allegations come amid a new surge of voter fraud investigations at DHS, which CNN first reported two weeks ago, as the department signals its role as a key driver of Trump’s election agenda.

The accuracy flaws in the federal citizenship records that agents are using for identifying potential non-citizen voters are well known and acknowledged even in the training materials, the whistleblower report alleges. But agents are nonetheless instructed to press on, even when key gaps in the data remain. At one point in a training video, the instructor says that key information in the record might be added later on, “through supplemental magic,” according to transcription excerpts of the training released with the report.

The whistleblower is being represented by Democracy Defenders, an organization that has opposed many Trump policies in court.

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

Leonardo Munoz/AFP/Getty Images/文件

一位举报人在周一由参议院民主党高层发布的一份报告中声称，国土安全部正在使用法律上存在疑问的策略，并依赖不可靠的数据来调查非公民投票情况。

这些披露引发了民主党人和选民权益倡导者的指责，他们认为这是一张可能误伤合格选民的全面搜捕网，因为唐纳德·特朗普总统已将寻找大规模非公民投票的证据（研究表明这种情况极其罕见）作为其政府的首要任务。

举报人披露的大部分内容都集中在国土安全部特工的培训材料上，这些特工负责执行一项名为“非法选民倡议”的调查工作。

举报人的律师在报告中称，这项行动正在调查“50个州的选民记录，目标涉及数十万人”。官员们奉命调查非公民以及可能在入籍前已登记或投票的归化美国公民。

该计划于 8 月下旬启动后，美国公民及移民服务局欺诈检测部门的国土安全部特工只有几周的时间来筛选数千人的选民记录，并为被认定为非法投票的人创建执法档案，即 TECS 记录。

举报人报告称，特工们对审查中使用的一些数据的来源毫不知情，而且即使特工“有理由相信国土安全部提供的原始数据不够可靠，不足以创建TECS记录”，这一过程也会导致个人被标记为非法选民。

这面旗帜可能会对这些人今后与政府的往来产生影响，使他们在过境时面临更严格的检查，并可能受到国土安全部的更多调查。但民主党人周一声称，此举表明特朗普更广泛的目标在于散布对选举的怀疑，尤其是在民主党人预计今年秋季将重新夺回至少一个国会院的控制权之际。

加州参议员亚历克斯·帕迪利亚周一在新闻发布会上表示：“事实是，这与维护选举公正性毫无关系。这只是个借口。真正的目的是为了防止有人利用捏造的证据恐吓选民，剥夺符合资格的美国人的投票权，甚至破坏或质疑今年11月的选举结果——这是特朗普惯用的伎俩。”

CNN已联系国土安全部，就举报人报告寻求置评。

特朗普政府为其举措进行了广泛的辩护，称其目标是确保只有合法有权投票的人才能投票。

培训材料指示特工使用州选民登记门户网站获取目标信息，并指示特工冒充选民查看其选民记录——这可能违反州法律。报告称，当特工提出以这种方式使用州门户网站可能违法时，他们的上级告诉他们，“只要这些搜索是作为其公务的一部分进行，并且有妥善记录，他们就无需承担个人责任。”

帕迪利亚说：“如果这项举措真的合法，那么为什么国土安全部领导层还要向其官员承诺他们不会承担责任呢？这说明了很多问题。”

举报人投诉称，官员们每天至少要审查 40 人，这迫使他们在几分钟内确认自己的身份、公民身份以及投票和登记记录——这种速度加剧了合法选民被错误调查的风险。

周日，参议院民主党人致信国土安全部长马克韦恩·穆林，要求他停止这项行动。《纽约时报》9月初首次报道了利用州级门户网站的情况。

这些指控正值国土安全部新一轮选民欺诈调查之际，CNN两周前率先报道了此事，该部门也因此展现出其作为特朗普选举议程关键推动者的角色。

举报人报告称，联邦公民身份记录的准确性缺陷是执法人员用来识别潜在非公民选民的，这些缺陷早已为人所知，甚至在培训材料中也有所提及。然而，执法人员却被指示继续工作，即便数据中存在关键缺口。根据报告公布的培训文字记录摘录，在一段培训视频中，教员曾表示，记录中的关键信息可能会在之后“通过某种神奇的方式”添加进去。

举报人由“民主捍卫者”组织代理，该组织曾在法庭上反对特朗普的多项政策。

CNN的摩根·里默对本报道亦有贡献。