DHS launched criminal voter-fraud investigation surge across nine states ahead of midterms

On September 1, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security, under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, directed Homeland Security Investigations to launch a "coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative" across nine states, according to internal federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement component that ordinarily investigates human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, was directed to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support "timely prosecutorial review" from early September through mid-October in Washington state, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut -- a window that runs directly through the campaign season ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.

Longstanding Justice Department guidance has discouraged "overt" investigative action as an election approaches, warning that doing otherwise "runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns." The first Trump administration formally rescinded that policy, and DHS, a separate department, is not bound by it; the new guidance directing the surge makes no reference to election-timing concerns.

The surge extends a broader campaign by Mullin to position DHS as a central force in the administration's search for voter fraud, including pressuring states to share their voter rolls for federal audit and threatening to withhold grant funding from states that decline a broader set of election changes. DHS's own numbers have proven far less definitive than the department has publicized: DHS told Nevada's top election officials it had "confirmed" only 185 of the roughly 16,000 noncitizen voter registrations it had publicly claimed to find in the state, with another 6,200 labeled "higher confidence matches" still requiring further vetting. A Homeland Security spokesperson said HSI "is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found" and is "committed to restoring integrity to our election systems."

Updates

2026-09-04 — DOJ filed first criminal charges from the surge [3, 4]

U.S. Attorney's offices announced criminal charges against five people accused of registering or voting as noncitizens -- Marisol Guzman and Thomas Holtzman (Carlisle, PA), Katya Rodriguez (Harrisburg, PA), Jesus Javier Jurado Garcia (Beloit, WI), and Mercedes Alexandra Cardoso (Union County, NJ) -- among the first prosecutions from the DHS-directed surge, investigated with Homeland Security Investigations' help. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel both spoke on the record; U.S. Attorney Brian Miller said "illegal voting is not a victimless crime." Pennsylvania's Department of State reiterated that "noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania" and that such registrations typically trace to "software malfunctions or administrative errors" rather than intentional fraud -- echoing DHS's own acknowledgment, already recorded above, that it had substantiated only a small fraction of the noncitizen-registration numbers it publicly claimed.