Trump administration tasks ICE with tracking ‘false’ voters ahead of the midterms

With no basis in evidence, Donald Trump has spent years sowing doubt about possible electoral fraud in the United States. Now, months before the midterm elections — when key congressional seats that could reshape the political balance are at stake — it has emerged that the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has directly requested voting files for a handful of specific voters from election officials in battleground states such as Texas and North Carolina. EL PAÍS has had access an email chain between the federal agency and local authorities.

In Texas, the request was made to officials in Webb County, which includes the border city of Laredo, home to more than 269,000 residents, according to Census estimates for July 2025. In an email sent May 12, 2026, a special agent from the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit in that area asked the county election administrator directly for the voter registration documents and voting records of seven voters.

In the chain of emails, obtained by the nonprofit organization Democracy Forward through a public records lawsuit, the HSI agent refers to a phone conversation between the two but does not detail why he needs the information on these particular individuals.

In an earlier exchange, in April 2026, another HSI criminal analyst in Victoria, Texas, wrote to the Office of the Texas Secretary of State asking how to obtain voter information, including registration dates, the method by which voters had registered, and the elections in which they had voted. She asked whether the process should be handled directly through the counties, via an administrative subpoena, or through a grand jury. That email did state the request would be made as part of “an investigation in progress between HSI Victoria and Corpus Christi,” both Texas cities, but gave no further details.

Trump has repeatedly insisted on the idea of electoral fraud since 2016, and he did so again in 2020, after losing the popular vote in both elections. During his 2024 reelection campaign he also revived the claim, saying that if Democrat Kamala Harris beat him it would be because of fraud. Even his own party has contradicted him.

“Trump’s continued insistence that voter fraud is why Republicans lose elections has been very harmful for the party,” Republican former Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson stated in 2024. When fact-checking website Politifact asked the Republican National Committee in October of that year for evidence supporting Trump’s fraud claims, spokesperson Anna Kelly replied: “How can you fact check something that hasn’t happened yet?”

Politifact noted electoral fraud in the United States is “statistically rare and not enough to change the outcome of federal elections,” and that the few known cases ended in criminal convictions.

The online outlet Axios, which first reported on ICE inquiries in Texas and North Carolina, asked Webb County election administrator José Luis Castillo — who is included in the email chain — about the request for his voters’ data. “There’s nothing,” he replied. “In my opinion, they could use their resources for something more useful.”

Two cases in North Carolina

In North Carolina, an associate legal adviser in the Office of the Chief Counsel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requested information about the registration of two voters, one who registered in 2016 and another who did so three decades earlier. According to the emails, both voters were registered in Forsyth County, which voted largely for Democrats Joe Biden (56% of the vote) and Kamala Harris (55.7%) in the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, respectively.

In the first voter’s case, the ICE adviser detailed that the person registered in November 2016 cast an early ballot in that month’s general election and was subsequently removed from North Carolina’s voter rolls. Forsyth County Board of Elections director Tim Tsujii replied to the federal official by sending the document containing this voter’s information — belonging to a woman — dating from 2016. He did so as an attachment that is not part of the file obtained by Democracy Forward.

The second case ICE queried involved a man who registered to vote in December 1995. According to the email, the federal agent said the person voted early in the November 2008 general election and in person in the May 2008 primary. He was later removed from the county’s rolls. In that case, the county office could not provide the 1995 voter registration application; no one knew how to access records that old.

In an email on December 2, 2025, Tsujii said he could provide more recent documents, including a form the man used to change his address. The ICE adviser replied that any information about his voting history in North Carolina “would be gratefully appreciated.” A day later, the county elections director sent a file with three attachments: one labeled profile, another labeled change of address, and a third labeled cancellation. They could not be reviewed.

EL PAÍS asked DHS about its agency’s investigations in Texas and North Carolina. A DHS spokesman said they could not comment on ongoing inquiries, although he did confirm that HSI “actively works to detect and investigate electoral fraud wherever it occurs.”

Without responding with specific cases, the spokesman said they have “repeatedly shown that undocumented non-citizens can vote [...] in our elections.” He added that since April 2025 more than 24,000 cases of non-U.S. citizens appearing in voter files have been identified and that those cases were referred to HSI for “a thorough investigation.”

Democracy Forward told EL PAÍS it found it “disturbing to see the administration use law-enforcement resources to obtain sensitive information about a nonexistent problem.” It condemned ICE’s actions, saying the agency “has no role in investigating elections” and that county officials are the ones trained to review voter rolls and detect irregularities. Similar complaints were made in April 2026 by Democratic senators such as Rubén Gallego and Mark Kelly.

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