DHS whistleblower revealed USCIS ordered officers to impersonate voters, mine faulty data for citizen voter-fraud files

On September 14, 2026, Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made public a whistleblower disclosure alleging that the Department of Homeland Security ordered U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers to violate state law while hunting for "unlawful voters" ahead of the November midterms. The whistleblower, a client of the nonprofit Democracy Defenders Fund, said DHS diverted USCIS's Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) from its national-security duties and directed officers to search state voter-registration websites by falsely attesting that they were the voter in question or had the voter's authorization — a misrepresentation that, on sites like Virginia's, is itself a violation of state computer-fraud law.

According to the disclosure, USCIS headquarters acknowledged that the underlying DHS data could conflict with state records and contain errors, but directed officers to create federal law-enforcement ("TECS") records anyway, including against naturalized U.S. citizens misidentified by the faulty data, with officers given a quota of at least five subjects per hour and about twelve minutes each to determine citizenship status. Padilla and Schumer's office said the effort is part of a broader "Unlawful Voter Initiative" aimed at substantiating President Trump's unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, and demanded DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow immediately halt the initiative and report to Congress on its activities. DHS did not respond to NPR's request for comment.