On August 31, 2026, CNN reported internal federal guidance directing Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal-investigations arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to launch on September 1 a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review.” HSI offices in nine states were to take investigative action from early September to mid-October, according to the guidance: Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut. The California Globe and the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the same plan.
The timing is the issue. Voting opens in seven of the nine states before mid-October, starting with Pennsylvania on September 14. CNN noted that long-standing Justice Department policy discourages “overt” investigative steps as an election approaches; the department's manual warns that doing otherwise “runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities.” DHS is not bound by that policy, and CNN reported that the guidance makes no reference to those timing concerns. A DHS spokesperson said HSI “is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found.”
The hunt has produced few prosecutions. ProPublica reported in August that between January 2025 and May 2026 fewer than 150 alleged noncitizen voters were referred for prosecution and 41 were charged with voting illegally or other election-related crimes. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News the department is investigating 1,620 cases, has made 151 arrests and is reviewing 300,000 more. At a September 22 briefing, an HSI official put the figures at about 1,600 cases and 160 arrests, and Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the Justice Department had charged 70 people with “unlawful voting and registration offenses” since January 2025.
A Justice Department spokesperson said HSI's arrests “originate from voter fraud investigative leads, but many result in charges for related offenses, such as false claims to citizenship or false statements, rather than the voting statute itself.” The country has more than 211 million active registered voters, the Associated Press noted.
On September 18, San Francisco, Santa Clara County, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation sued DHS and its leaders, including Mullin, HSI chief Anthony Salisbury and border czar Tom Homan, in federal court in Northern California. The complaint alleges that “DHS is now deploying armed and often militarized agents to homes to interrogate residents about whether they are eligible to vote,” working from target lists it says will almost certainly include eligible citizens.
It cites the USCIS whistleblower disclosure published September 14 (see A DHS Whistleblower Says Immigration Officers Were Told to Pose as Voters on State Websites in a Hunt for Noncitizen Voting) and HSI's own posts, including a September 11 post from its San Francisco office showing agents knocking on residential doors with a statement that it would “investigate any allegations of noncitizen voting.” One plaintiff nurse, a naturalized citizen, has switched from voting in person to voting by mail out of fear of being targeted, the complaint says.
The suit claims the program violates Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, which bars intimidating voters, and asks the court to stop DHS from “deploying DHS agents to the homes of U.S. citizens to interrogate them about voter eligibility.” On September 23 Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin put the case on an expedited schedule: the government's opposition is due September 28, and a preliminary-injunction hearing, first set for October 1, was held October 19. She ordered the government to produce the administrative record on that schedule and denied the rest of the plaintiffs' request for early discovery. Asked about the lawsuit, the DHS press office told Reason it needed more time to respond.
These are allegations. The court granted a preliminary injunction on October 21 (see the update below); the administrative record, including the surge guidance, has since been filed on the docket. The case and arrest figures are the administration's own. The numbers problem runs through the effort: in Nevada, where DHS once claimed nearly 16,000 noncitizen registrants, the state says its records show that the 185 people DHS called confirmed noncitizens were citizens (see DHS Claims 250,000 Noncitizens Are Registered to Vote in Four States. Fact-Checkers and the States Say the Number Is Wildly Inflated.).
Update (October 22, 2026): on October 21, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted a preliminary injunction in California Nurses Association v. Mullin (No. 4:26-cv-10680, N.D. Cal.). The order bars DHS, ICE, HSI and USCIS from “elections-related field operations and field interviews” in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin involving people they “know, suspect, or should reasonably know or suspect are U.S. citizens,” and from operations in those states “based wholly on TECS records generated from the Voter Eligibility Matching Policy” against such people, through 8 p.m. on November 3. “This Order is STAYED until 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 23, 2026,” it says, and the plaintiffs must post a nominal $100 bond. The court found the government's matching data “voluminous and unreliable.” Only the nurses' unions had standing, under the Voting Rights Act's bar on intimidating those who help others vote; the cities and Voto Latino did not. The order is narrow: “Plaintiffs do not claim, nor does the Court find, that it is unlawful for federal officials to undertake investigations into unlawful voting in federal elections.” At the October 19 hearing, Justice Department lawyer Kelsey Helland called any intimidation “a minor aspect of lawfully investigative actions,” Courthouse News reported. DHS and the Justice Department “did not immediately comment,” the Washington Post reported, and no appeal was on the docket as of October 22.
Update (October 23, 2026): DHS told NPR after the ruling, “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.” In a declaration cited by the court, USCIS official Nicolas Bartell had acknowledged a “low possibility” that citizens could be “erroneously identified as potential aliens” in federal records. The plaintiffs posted the court's $100 bond on October 22. As of the morning of October 23 the docket showed no notice of appeal or stay motion from the government.