American Oversight Sues DHS for Records on Secretive ‘Unlawful Voter Initiative’ as Trump Administration Pledges to Scrutinize Voter Records After Election

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, American Oversight filed suit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) demanding the agencies release records about USCIS’s “Unlawful Voter Initiative,” a secretive effort in which, according to a whistleblower, USCIS officers were diverted from their regular duties to comb through voter data in search of supposed noncitizen voters and were instructed to misrepresent themselves to gain access to state voter records. The lawsuit comes on the heels of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s Election Day pledge to review voting logs from last week’s election in search of noncitizen voting.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asks the court to order the agencies to expedite six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and release records on the initiative’s quotas, training, data sources, and communications with state election officials. The records could shed light on how the administration is investigating alleged noncitizen voting, what safeguards exist to protect eligible voters, and whether these efforts could be used to cast doubt on legitimate election results.

“The election may be over, but the Trump administration’s efforts to cast suspicion on American voters is far from finished,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “As Americans showed up to the polls, Secretary Mullin announced plans to comb through voting records in pursuit of a noncitizen voting problem the evidence shows doesn’t exist. That promise is especially troubling given what a whistleblower has already alleged about the administration’s effort to investigate purported noncitizen voters: aggressive quotas, data of unclear origin, and instructions to misrepresent themselves to gain access to state voter systems. That’s a recipe for eligible citizens to be wrongly flagged and investigated, while potentially casting doubt on legitimate election results. The public deserves to see the rules, the data, and the quotas behind this operation and know what safeguards are in place to protect eligible voters. We’re going to court to demand those answers.”

In September, Sens. Alex Padilla and Chuck Schumer sent a letter to DHS and USCIS that included a whistleblower disclosure about the initiative. The whistleblower alleged that officers in USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate (FDNS) were diverted to review data to identify supposed “unlawful voters,” and that USCIS instructed employees to misrepresent themselves to gain access to state voter records. Advocates indicate such false representations “would likely violate relevant state law,” and that officers faced a quota of at least five subjects per hour and 40 per day, leaving about 12 minutes to determine whether a person was a citizen or an unlawful voter. Those quotas — according to the whistleblower — left too little time to thoroughly review each case, increasing the risk of error, and officers did not know the source of the DHS voter data they were reviewing.

The initiative comes amid the Trump administration’s repeated statements that large numbers of noncitizens are voting in U.S. elections — claims that are unsupported by evidence. 

American Oversight’s lawsuit concerns six FOIA requests filed on Sept. 16. They seek emails from top DHS officials — including Mullin, Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar, and Senior Counselor Heather Honey — and from Joseph Edlow and other senior USCIS leaders containing terms such as “unlawful voter,” “voter fraud,” “state voter,” “voter record,” “FDNS enhancement,” and “overtime”; training materials given to FDNS personnel, including a video shown to them on or around Aug. 21; records of any quotas or targets for the number of people officers were expected to review; USCIS communications since July 1 with election offices in 19 states and the District of Columbia; and records identifying the sources and types of data provided to officers, along with any matching or data-mining software used in the initiative. American Oversight is not seeking the voter data itself.

Given the urgency of the issue, American Oversight asked both agencies to expedite its requests. DHS did not acknowledge our request until Oct. 17 — a month after it was filed — when it denied expedited processing and claimed an extension to respond. It has not communicated with American Oversight since. USCIS has not responded to any of the five requests submitted to it, including the requests for expedited processing. Neither agency has produced any records.

This lawsuit builds on American Oversight’s work to expose the Trump administration’s use of federal data to police voter rolls, including lawsuits filed with Campaign Legal Center in October 2025 seeking records on DHS’s overhaul of its SAVE system, which now draws on federal data to flag possible noncitizens on state voter rolls.