Less than a month after a USPS whistleblower warned Americans not to vote by mail in 2026, a new whistleblower report has called out the Department of Homeland Security for tracking state-voter data… through sometimes illegal means.
On Monday, DHS was named in a whistleblower report published by Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), revealing the details of its “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” Trump’s latest attempt to crack down on voting, interfere in the elections, guarantee the midterms, etc. etc. The initiative was launched earlier this month, and specifically sought to hunt down “unlawfully” registered voters—like, say, people who’ve used the wrong address multiple times to vote in elections.
Now, apart from this being yet another reminder that Markwayne Mullin’s notably been leading DHS by going full Creep Mode (like, yes, he’s still doing horrible things, though much more discreetly than that of his predecessor), the 30-page document says DHS agents and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees have been carrying out the initiative since August. Then, they were all given a less-than-two-hour training session and required to drop all other projects they were working on. Since then, staffers have been posing as voters and investigating as many as 40 names a day, in what the whistleblower says has been a “breakneck pace”: A dedicated 12 minutes to each person.
Jezebel’s reached out to DHS for comment, and we’ll let you know if we hear back.
🚨BREAKING: A whistleblower is alleging that immigration agency USCIS directed officers to misrepresent themselves to access state voter records, then label people “unlawful voters” — including U.S. citizens — using unreliable data.
Story to come.
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) September 14, 2026 at 7:42 PM
Ignoring for a moment how incredibly creepy this all is, the whistleblower report points out that “employees may be required to use the PII to make false attestations that they are the voter or are acting with the voter’s express authorization, in order to access these individual voters’ records.” PII—or personally identifiable information—includes things like names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers.
This information is plugged into public-facing state sites to find a person’s voting history. However, in some states, like Virginia, it’s outright illegal for anyone other than the individual to search their records.
“The Whistleblower has reason to believe that, with the knowledge and at the direction of leadership at headquarters, the Unlawful Voter Initiative has potentially already committed thousands of violations of state law in an effort to improperly access individuals’ voter records,” the report explains.
So, yeah, great. Love a good ol’ democracy where whistleblower reports are what get us by.
