# ICE Voter Records Collection Between late 2025 and mid-2026, [[Homeland Security Investigations]] — the investigative arm of [[ICE]] — built a voter-fraud program that pulled roughly **100 million voter records** from three sources, routed them through an internal data lab for "identification of high-value targets," and began loading state voter rolls into [[Palantir]]'s ELITE deportation-targeting system. The program also reviewed well over a hundred voter-registration nonprofits, flagged a Pennsylvania mosque-rights group and a skateboard retailer, and drew up plans for possible undercover operations against registration groups in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The record comes from ICE's own documents: a 169-page production released on **October 7, 2026** to [[Democracy Forward]] through a FOIA lawsuit. [[Democracy Docket]] and [[Judd Legum]]'s *Popular Information* reported it first. Everything below cites the documents directly unless noted. > [!info] The numbers, from ICE's May 27, 2026 briefing papers ("Strategic Lines of Effort") > | Line | Records | Detail | > |---|---|---| > | DOJ dataset intake | **50.6 million** | "ingested; processing underway." Priority states: Texas, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio | > | DHS dataset intake | **48.4 million** | "obtained by DAS [[Heather Honey]] through independent sources of information" — sources not identified | > | USCIS-derived records | **26,235** | prioritized for vetting; top states NJ, MI, PA, MN, OH. 2,290 processed, **1,586 leads** sent to 24 HSI field offices | > | Data enrichment | — | "Datasets are currently with iLab for secondary enrichment and identification of high-value targets" | ## Timeline | Date | Event | |---|---| | December 29, 2025 | ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor sends an agency-wide "Broadcast Message: Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections" to its lawyers. It tells them that for the unlawful-voting grounds of removal there is "no requirement that the alien have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted, and no conviction is required." | | May 14, 2026 | HSI St. Paul makes administrative arrests of two lawful permanent residents, from Bosnia and Liberia, under the unlawful-voting removal ground. Neither has a criminal history. Both are referred to the US Attorney for possible prosecution. | | May 27, 2026 | Briefing documents for a DHS "fraud call" list the DOJ, DHS and USCIS dataset lines above. The call's agenda also lists "Counties with 2020 Results," "Voter Machines" and "Future Lines of Effort"; their contents are withheld. | | June 1–5, 2026 | HSI "Voter Fraud Report" status update: nonprofit reviews in PA, NJ, OH and MN; plans for possible undercover operations; joint HSI–FBI work on an Ohio canvassing firm. | | June 9, 2026 | HSI Cleveland and the FBI begin interviewing "over 100 current and former employees" of a redacted organization statewide, alongside planned search warrants. The investigation "targets individuals involved in fraudulent voter registration and illegal voting." Two days later the FBI raids the [[Ohio Organizing Collaborative]]. | | July 1–2, 2026 | Criminal arrests of a Slovak lawful permanent resident in New Jersey (with the state's Election Integrity Task Force, FBI and USCIS) and an Australian lawful permanent resident in New Orleans, indicted June 11. | | July 7, 2026 | Weekly report: voter-roll data from six states has been enriched by iLab and is "pending Palantir entry into ELITE"; two are held for legal review because of a court order. | | July 22, 2026 | A day after New Jersey reveals that its motor-vehicle agency registered about 6,600 noncitizens by mistake, ICE lawyers conclude the roughly 400 who voted are deportable regardless of knowledge; the deputy director replies "HSI is heavily working these cases." See [[New Jersey MVC Noncitizen Registration Error]]. | | July 23, 2026 | HSI St. Paul's consolidated report files Hennepin County voter-fraud cases under [[Operation North Star]], alongside protest prosecutions and undercover work inside activist networks. | | August 3, 2026 | "HSI Election Integrity Investigations" weekly: a "phased election integrity initiative" run through the Cross-Border Financial Crime Center. Arrest counts withheld. | | October 7, 2026 | Documents released to Democracy Forward; Democracy Docket and the *New York Times* report. | ## The legal theory: no conviction required The December 2025 broadcast is the hinge. It points ICE lawyers to two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act: §212(a)(10)(D)(i), which makes a noncitizen who has voted unlawfully inadmissible, and §237(a)(6)(A), which makes one deportable. Neither requires that the person knew the vote was illegal, and neither requires a criminal conviction. The only exception covers someone with two citizen parents who lived in the US before age 16 and reasonably believed they were a citizen. The broadcast is legally accurate. That is the point. Criminal voter-fraud prosecution needs proof of intent, a jury and a conviction, and is rare. Removal proceedings need none of those. By routing election cases into immigration court, the program moves them to the forum with the lowest burden of proof. ## From voter rolls to deportation targets The July 7, 2026 weekly report states the plan plainly. iLab's processing "focuses on DOJ voting rolls and USCIS data." Coordination continues "particularly on ingesting processed voter roll data into the ELITE enforcement system." ELITE is the Palantir targeting module described on [[ImmigrationOS]]. It generates prioritized lists of people for ICE field officers to arrest. The same report lists **Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, Connecticut, Georgia and Kentucky** as "enriched by the iLab and … pending Palantir entry into ELITE." Michigan and New Mexico were "pending legal review in compliance with Court Order *State of California v. Trump*," the Massachusetts injunction against parts of [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]]. That order bars agencies from implementing Sections 2, 3 and 5 of the EO as to the plaintiff states for the November 3, 2026 election. The document's own plaintiff list includes Connecticut, yet only Michigan and New Mexico are shown as held for review. The documents don't explain the difference. ## The nonprofit reviews The June 5, 2026 report (status as of June 1) describes HSI analysts working through voter-registration groups: - **Pennsylvania:** 82 NGOs reviewed. **CAIR Pennsylvania** and **Zumiez**, a Washington-state skateboard and clothing retailer with Pennsylvania stores, were "flagged for further investigation." The documents don't explain why Zumiez was on the list. - **New Jersey:** about 41 voter-registration NGOs found on the nonprofit databases Candid and CauseIQ, plus three more from open sources. "No derogatory information" was found on any of them. - **Amalgamated Foundation:** 20 of 56 funds reviewed because the foundation is a client of an Ohio firm tied to the investigation below. No suspicious activity or derogatory information. - **Community Building Strategies' clients:** research begun on 22 organizations, including Education Minnesota, Faith in Minnesota, ISAIAH and Detroit Action. - **Tip line:** 26 organizations flagged, under review. ### Ohio: Black Fork Strategies HSI's Cleveland office and the [[FBI]] were jointly investigating **Black Fork Strategies**, an Ohio canvassing firm the documents describe as "suspected of voter registration fraud." They had identified seven companies serving as "consolidation centers" for data gathered by canvassers and were "finalizing investigative plans." This is the same investigation environment as the June 11, 2026 FBI raid on the [[Ohio Organizing Collaborative]]. ### Undercover operations A planning section titled "Organizations and Potential UC Operations" describes coordination with the Cross-Border Financial Crimes Center's intelligence unit "to identify specific organizations that may be predatory in nature, particularly those suspected of illegal alien registration and voter encouragement." The stated objective was "possible deployment of undercover agents (UCAs)" against organizations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Future operations "may involve utilizing UCAs to target identified organizations and engage in communications with these entities." The documents released so far don't show whether any were carried out. ## Who was briefed The program was briefed to the top of ICE. The May 27, 2026 briefing papers went out under the subject line "SOPDD Venturella - Briefing Documents - Tomorrow's Fraud Call" — SOPDD is the senior official performing the duties of the director, [[David Venturella]]. The June 8 advisory on the Ohio interviews and search warrants was addressed to him by first name. Deputy Director [[Charles Wall]] is on the July 22 New Jersey thread. ## How HSI describes the program (August 2026) By August the program had a name and a structure. The August 3, 2026 weekly, titled "HSI Election Integrity Investigations," describes "a phased election integrity initiative focused on identifying unlawful voter activity, detecting organized facilitation networks, and supporting criminal and administrative enforcement actions," built on "voter roll acquisition, data enrichment, intelligence analysis, lead development, field validation, and identification of organizations potentially facilitating unlawful voter registration or voting activity." It tracks voter-fraud criminal and administrative arrests under two program codes, VRO and VFR. The counts are withheld. ## Who gets arrested The individual cases in the files don't show organized fraud. They show lawful permanent residents, people with green cards, caught by the paperwork: - **St. Paul, May 14:** two green-card holders from Bosnia and Liberia, no criminal history, arrested administratively for unlawful voting. - **New Jersey, July 1:** a Slovak green-card holder arrested on a criminal warrant after stating on a naturalization application that they had never registered or voted. - **New Orleans, July 2:** an Australian green-card holder and longtime Louisiana resident, indicted June 11 for a false claim of citizenship and voter fraud. She told *The Times-Picayune* she learned of the charges from news reports. - **New Jersey, July 22:** ICE's response to the state's own registration error. See [[New Jersey MVC Noncitizen Registration Error]]. - **Minnesota:** in Hennepin County, administrative immigration arrests and interviews are being used, per the local prosecutor, "to support the ongoing criminal case." See [[Operation North Star]]. ## Monitoring the primaries The same weekly reports track state primaries. The Cross-Border Financial Crimes Center's intelligence unit was "monitoring developments for the upcoming state primary elections to identify emerging trends, vulnerabilities, or indicators that may impact election integrity." For the August 4 primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington, the entry reads "no relevant developments." Other entries record coordination with "state election officials, USCIS, OPLA, USPIS" — the Postal Inspection Service. ## What ICE's own talking points say One document in the production carries talking points for officials asked about ICE at polling places. They say: "ICE does not possess independent authority to administer or oversee elections," and that federal election law falls "under the primary jurisdiction of DOJ, including the FBI." The program described in the rest of the production — voter files, primary monitoring, registration-group reviews — is ICE operating in exactly the field its talking points disclaim. ## Analysis **The plumbing joins two systems that were built to stay apart.** Voter rolls are maintained by states for running elections. ELITE exists to find people to arrest. The program's core move is to make the first an input to the second. Once that pipe exists, every ordinary registration error becomes a potential enforcement lead. The [[Electronic Registration Information Center]] — which [[Heather Honey]] helped persuade states to quit — was a cross-check system built to clean rolls without that consequence. **The review is the product.** Most of the nonprofits HSI examined turned up nothing, by its own account. But a flagged list that pairs CAIR with a skateboard retailer, and plans for undercover contact with registration drives, do their work whether or not anyone is charged. A registration group that knows federal agents may pose as volunteers registers fewer people. This is the vault's recurring pattern: *the institution does the work, not the proof*. **The only brake on record is a court order.** The single place in the documents where the pipeline pauses is the Massachusetts injunction in *California v. Trump*. Nothing in the production shows an internal legal, policy or privacy check that stopped data from moving. ## Open questions - Whose "over 100 current and former employees" did HSI and the FBI interview across Ohio starting June 9, and is it the organization the FBI raided two days later? - What were Honey's "independent sources of information" for 48.4 million records? - Were any of the contemplated undercover operations carried out? - Did voter-roll data for Missouri, Connecticut, Georgia or Kentucky enter ELITE, and on whose authority? - Has anyone been placed in removal proceedings on the basis of data from this program? ## See also - [[Heather Honey]] · [[Cleta Mitchell]] · [[Election Integrity Network]] - [[ImmigrationOS]] · [[Palantir]] · [[Surveillance State]] - [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]] · [[SAVE Act]] · [[Proof of Citizenship Requirement]] - [[Ohio Organizing Collaborative]] · [[Homeland Security Investigations]] - [[New Jersey MVC Noncitizen Registration Error]] · [[Operation North Star]] · [[Cities Church Protest]] · [[Charles Wall]] - [[2026 Midterms Hub]]