ICE's HSI unit obtains individual voter files from Texas and North Carolina counties to investigate alleged noncitizen voting

In emails obtained through public-records requests by the legal group Democracy Forward and first reported by Axios on June 13, 2026, local election officials in Webb County, Texas, and Forsyth County, North Carolina, were shown to have handed individual voter-file records directly to agents of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative unit within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The files at issue can include a voter's registration history, residential address, date of birth, driver's-license number, and complete voting history. According to the emails, an HSI request reached Webb County in May 2026, while an HSI agent had sought registration information on two voters in Forsyth County in November 2025; in both counties the records were provided. The contacts followed an April 2026 inquiry from an HSI "criminal analyst" to the Texas Secretary of State's general counsel asking what information and subpoenas were needed to obtain voter data, and Heather Honey — DHS's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity and a former activist who challenged the 2020 election results — also pressed Texas officials for voter information.

The actions are part of a broader, multi-agency effort built on President Trump's repeated and unsupported claims that noncitizen voting is widespread. Webb County elections administrator Jose Castillo said he had never before encountered such requests and that, over four years, he had recorded only two confirmed cases of noncitizen voting among more than 150,000 registered voters; he said he is now directing HSI to use public-records requests instead. Democracy Forward's senior oversight counsel Dan McGrath said that "using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone." A DHS spokesperson defended the work, saying HSI "is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found." On June 9, 2026, DHS General Counsel James Percival directed ICE to "ensure consequences" — including deportation — for noncitizens found to have voted.

The Constitution's Elections Clause reserves the administration of elections and the maintenance of voter rolls chiefly to the states and to Congress, not to federal law-enforcement agencies. The Standing records this episode because the use of an immigration-enforcement and deportation apparatus to extract records on individual voters from county election offices targets immigrant and naturalized-citizen communities, carries a voter-intimidation effect against conduct that the evidence shows is exceedingly rare, and represents an executive reach into a domain the constitutional design assigns elsewhere.