2026-08-12T10:00:30.666Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/trump-homeland-security-voter-fraud-crusade
上月，内华达州州选举办公室收到一封令人费解的邮件。一名福克斯新闻记者询问该州是否就国土安全部所谓的在其选民名册中发现1.5万多名非公民一事作出回应。
选举官员传阅了这一请求，但无人知晓这一说法的来源。
“我们的回复非常直白，就像我们完全不知道你在说什么，”内华达州务卿西斯科·阿吉拉尔告诉美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）。
三天后，他们得到了答案。国土安全部宣布，通过对公开选民数据的分析，在内华达州、加利福尼亚州、新泽西州和宾夕法尼亚州发现了超过25万名潜在非公民选民。
四个州的官员均表示对此毫不知情。他们对调查结果提出质疑，并表示国土安全部既未提供其分析方法，也未公布所谓不符合资格的选民名单。
“我无法凭空捏造的东西进行辩解或辩护，”阿吉拉尔说，“我们的工作基于事实，而非指控或道听途说的信息。”
这一宣布与总统唐纳德·特朗普的黄金时段演讲同步进行。特朗普表示，他正在解密有关美国选举系统漏洞的信息。他的盟友称这一发现是重磅炸弹。一些共和党官员公开和私下都对这些结果表示犹豫。
长期以来附和特朗普部分选举欺诈指控的国土安全部部长马克韦恩·马利根在总统演讲后强调了自己的角色。在白宫场地举行的新闻发布会上，他大肆宣扬其部门有关非公民选民的发现，敦促更多州加强合作，并发出了严厉警告。
“如果选举官员在我们向他们提供保障选举安全所需的信息后仍选择不作为，那么这些人也可能面临罚款、处罚，甚至视事态发展程度面临牢狱之灾，”马利根说道。
自3月特朗普解雇克里斯蒂·诺姆并接任国土安全部部长以来，马利根加快了将该部门打造成特朗普所谓普遍选举欺诈调查运动核心力量的步伐。国土安全部敦促各州共享其选民名册以供审计，并誓言将拒绝采纳更广泛选举改革的州扣留拨款。
去年，国土安全部任命希瑟·霍尼领导一项“选举诚信”运动。霍尼是一名与特朗普立场一致的选举研究员，因挑战2020年选举结果而全国知名。
在马利根的领导下，霍尼的影响力不断扩大，并于6月被提拔为部长高级顾问。
在特朗普的第二任期内，国土安全部已偏离其长期以来协助选举安全的角色，将更多资源投入到选民欺诈指控上，声称有大量非公民已登记投票——尤其是在民主党领导的州。
联邦法律禁止非公民投票，也禁止在登记时作出虚假陈述。本届政府大幅加大了揭露此类违规行为的力度，追究刑事责任并启动驱逐程序。
该部门将调查工作交给了下属的一个联邦机构——国土安全调查局，这是移民和海关执法局的一个分支，通常负责打击人口贩运、毒品走私和儿童剥削等重大犯罪，而非选民欺诈。
“国土安全调查局正在积极排查和调查任何可发现的选举欺诈行为，”国土安全部发言人在给CNN的一份声明中表示，“我们多次证明，非法外籍人士能够且确实会在我们的选举中投票。”
美国有线电视新闻网获取的通讯记录显示，国土安全调查局特工数月来一直在向全美各地的地方选举官员施压，要求提供选民记录以构建刑事案件。他们的调查最初主要针对个别选民，但现已扩大到 canvassing 团体，甚至涉及已被驳斥的2020年选举阴谋论相关问题，且往往带有紧迫感。
“如果我按照常规方法和速度开展调查，通常不会向你提出这种要求，但现在时间线有点紧张，”一名国土安全调查局特工在向俄亥俄州一名县选举官员索要多名选民的记录时说道。
该特工后来承认：“选民欺诈调查通常不是国土安全调查局的工作范畴。”
根据CNN审查的一份内部备忘录，在特朗普政府领导下，特工们曾被指派调查已入籍美国公民是否在获得公民身份前登记或投票。另一份备忘录指示国土安全调查局特工与美国公民及移民服务局协调，在怀疑非公民参与或涉及选民欺诈时启动驱逐程序。
“所有国土安全调查局办公室都参与了这些重要工作，”国土安全部发言人表示。
数月来，特工们一直在追查通过一个备受争议的联邦核查系统标记为潜在非公民的数万人的投票历史——马利根在新闻发布会上引用的正是同一批名单，以此作为大量非公民已登记投票的确凿证据。
尽管特朗普及其盟友就普遍的非公民投票问题提出了全面指控，但CNN获取的邮件揭示了一个更为混乱的现实。特工们多次追查线索，结果却发现他们认错了人，或缺乏足够信息进行确认——在某些情况下，几乎没人投过票。
在俄亥俄州富兰克林县，多名被国土安全调查局标记的人从未登记投票。在对另一名选民的出生日期产生混淆后，该特工写道：“哎呀！原来这位选民其实是他的父亲。”
邮件显示，调查很快扩大到 canvassing 团体，包括对俄亥俄州组织协作组织的询问。这是一个进步派选民动员组织，特工们于6月突袭了该组织——距离此次邮件往来已过去四个月。
在得克萨斯州本德堡县，据“民主向前”组织获取并共享给CNN的记录显示，国土安全调查局在提供待核查名单之前，已向选举主任发出传票索要记录。当县官员要求提供更多细节以确保识别出正确的选民时，调查人员回复：“目前我发送的信息就是我们所拥有的全部。如果能按所提供的信息继续推进，那就太好了。我们可能需要在后期进行额外核查。”
“这看起来像是国土安全部在竭尽所能，”投票权利倡导组织“竞选法律中心”战略调查主任布伦丹·费舍尔说道。
在过去18个月里，本届政府加强了名为SAVE（外侨资格系统核查）的公民身份记录项目，将其与其他联邦机构的数据相结合。这一举措得到了共和党选举官员的赞扬，但他们也承认，数据匹配可能会产生假阳性结果，需要进一步调查。此外，司法部一直在要求各州提交其选民名册，并对30个拒绝提交的州提起诉讼，以便本届政府自行通过SAVE系统审核不符合资格的选民。
“SAVE系统的扩张未能证实普遍非公民投票的说法，因此现在政府正通过指示国土安全调查局特工追查数量非常有限的潜在案件来挽回颜面，”费舍尔说。
CNN审查的去年在国土安全调查局内部传阅的一份指导文件指示，负责选举相关案件的特工在收集证据前，应先确定哪些联邦法律赋予其调查权。文件还指示他们在发出传票或进行采访前咨询检察官。
该文件警告不得采取可能影响选举的公开行动，并禁止会“抑制”投票的移民执法行动。它还禁止特工绕过掌握记录的选举官员或监督选举事务的司法部部门。
国土安全部也加入了本届政府持续寻找证据支持特朗普毫无根据的指控的行动，即2020年选举被操纵，使其落败。
今年2月，国土安全调查局就此前的选举审查事宜联系了亚利桑那州总检察长办公室。这一联络首先由VoteBeat报道，发生在时任国土安全部部长诺姆在亚利桑那州举行一场不寻常的新闻发布会，宣传一项被搁置的特朗普支持的选举法案数天后。
在向亚利桑那州民主党总检察长办公室的工作人员提出的询问中，一名国土安全调查局特工询问了有关马里科帕县迟到选票以及部分选票印刷墨水所谓差异的指控——这些指控此前已被调查过。
“我必须在（今日下班前）提交一份报告，所以希望能尽快拿到一些材料，”一名国土安全调查局特工在后续邮件中写道。
总检察长办公室提供了由马克·布罗诺维奇汇编的早期调查材料。布罗诺维奇是2023年前领导该办公室的共和党人。这引发了国土安全调查局官员在3月5日的进一步提问。
当天，特朗普解雇了诺姆，同时宣布由马利根接任。国土安全调查局针对2020年选举向州总检察长办公室的问询就此停止，但司法部另行从亚利桑那州共和党控制的参议院获取了另一份选举审查记录。自那以后，亚利桑那州联邦2020年选举调查未采取任何公开行动。
在马利根的领导下，国土安全部就外国势力污染民主党领导州的选民名册问题发表了全面声明，有时还夸大了与共和党选举官员合作时的发现成果。
上月，国土安全部表示，在约24个自愿提交选民名册的主要由共和党领导的州中，发现了超过2.8万名非公民选民（后修正为不足2.5万名）。
但其中两个州——佐治亚州和北卡罗来纳州——的官员对调查结果提出质疑，称数字可能被夸大，需要更仔细审查。其他地方的共和党官员强调，一旦联邦政府将SAVE系统生成的匹配结果移交各州，必须经过多轮额外审查。
在国土安全部称赞其合作的得克萨斯州，州务卿办公室近日通知地方选举官员，部分因SAVE系统审查而被取消登记的选民可能需要重新加入名册，因为州内记录显示他们已在车管所证明了公民身份。
尽管如此，国土安全部仍敦促各州允许该局检查其选民名册，并指出只有州和地方选举官员——而非联邦政府——才能移除选民。
国土安全部的选民审计行动面临多起诉讼，指控联邦数据系统导致草率的选民清除，剥夺了合格选民的投票权。在其中一起案件中，法院认定国土安全部在修订数据项目的方式上违反了隐私法，并发布裁决，禁止其在大多数州使用该系统。
https://www.cnn.com/
国土安全部正在对该裁决提起上诉，马利根抨击该裁决来自一名“激进主义”法官。
除少数公开案件外，本届政府未透露有多少国土安全调查局的调查已被移交起诉或驱逐。这些案件包括今年春季司法部宣布的针对新泽西州几名涉嫌非公民选民的指控。
这些指控早于民主党州长米基·谢里尔披露州车管所的错误，该错误误将数千名非公民加入新泽西州的选民名册。据该州长称，其中近400人已投票。
国土安全部官员表示，他们正在调查这一失误，以便提起诉讼和驱逐程序。谢里尔拒绝了本届政府要求提供这些选民数据的请求，称“该请求没有法律依据，我将永远保护新泽西州民众。”
与此同时，在内华达州，国土安全部上周请求州选举官员与马利根举行虚拟会议，讨论所谓的数千名潜在非公民登记选民问题。在CNN获取的邮件中，国土安全部表示感谢内华达州“愿意为这一重要努力开展合作”，并希望“尽快安排会议”。
一名内华达州官员拒绝了这一请求，告知国土安全部，其未充分解释如何得出有关该州选民名册的说法。
“一旦我们收到并评估这些信息，我们将能够与贵办公室进行富有成效和有意义的讨论，”该官员说道。
国土安全部回复称，其分析“未使用SAVE系统”，并提出将在会议期间解释其流程并提供疑似非公民名单。
“我们安排一次通话吧，”内华达州官员回应道。
How Trump turned Homeland Security into an engine of his voter fraud crusade
2026-08-12T10:00:30.666Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/politics/trump-homeland-security-voter-fraud-crusade
A puzzling email landed in Nevada’s state election office last month. A Fox News reporter wanted to know if the state had a response to the Department of Homeland Security’s purported discovery of more than 15,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.
Election officials circulated the request. No one knew where the claim had come from.
“We just responded very plainly, like we have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told CNN.
Three days later, they got their answer. DHS announced that an analysis of public voter data had found more than 250,000 potential noncitizens registered in Nevada, California, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Officials in all four states said they were blindsided. They disputed the findings and said DHS had provided neither its methodology nor the names of the allegedly ineligible voters.
“I can’t take something that’s made up out of thin air and try to justify it or defend it,” Aguilar said. “We operate off of facts, not allegations or anecdotal information.”
The announcement coincided with a primetime address by President Donald Trump, who said he was declassifying information exposing vulnerabilities in the nation’s election system. His allies hailed the findings as a bombshell. Publicly and privately, some Republican officials balked at them.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has long echoed some of Trump’s election fraud claims, underscored his role after the president’s speech. At a press conference on the White House grounds, he touted his department’s noncitizen findings, urged more states to collaborate, and delivered a stark warning.
“If the election officials – once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to – then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison,” Mullin said.
Since taking over DHS in March after Trump fired Kristi Noem, Mullin has accelerated efforts to make the department a central force in Trump’s crusade against purported widespread election fraud. DHS has pushed states to share their voter rolls for audit and vowed to withhold grant funding from those that refuse to adopt a broader set of election reforms.
Last year, DHS tapped Heather Honey, a Trump-aligned election researcher who gained national attention for her efforts challenging the 2020 results, to lead an “election integrity” campaign.
Honey’s influence has grown under Mullin, and in June, the department promoted her to senior counselor to the secretary.
In Trump’s second term, DHS has pivoted away from its longstanding role to help with election security and focused far more resources on voter fraud allegations, claiming troves of noncitizens are registered – and likely voting – especially in Democratic-led states.
Federal law bars noncitizens from voting as well as making false statements to register. The administration has sharply intensified efforts to uncover such violations – pursuing criminal charges and deportations.
The department has leaned for investigative work on one of its federal agencies – Homeland Security Investigations – an arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that typically tackles major crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling and child exploitation, not voter fraud.
“HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections.”
Communications obtained by CNN show that HSI agents have spent months pressing local election officials across the country for voter records to build criminal cases. Their inquiries have primarily centered on a slew of individual voters, but the probes have expanded to canvassing groups and even questions on debunked theories about the 2020 election – often with a sense of urgency.
“I wouldn’t normally ask this of you if I was conducting an investigation with my usual methodology and speed, but there’s a bit of pressure on the timeline of things,” one HSI agent told a county election official in Ohio while requesting records for several names.
The agent later acknowledged: “Voter fraud investigations aren’t typically what HSI works.”
Under the Trump administration, agents have, for example, been assigned to investigate whether naturalized US citizens registered or voted before becoming citizens, according to an internal memo reviewed by CNN. Another memo directs HSI agents to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services to begin removal proceedings when a noncitizen is suspected of or linked to voter fraud.
“All HSI offices are engaged in these important efforts,” the DHS spokesperson said.
For months, agents have been working to trace the voting histories of tens of thousands of people flagged as potential noncitizens by a controversial federal verification system — the same pool of names Mullin cited at his news conference as definitive proof that large numbers of noncitizens are registered to vote.
While Trump and his allies have made sweeping claims about widespread noncitizen voting, emails obtained by CNN reveal a messier reality. Agents repeatedly pursued leads only to discover that they had identified the wrong people or lacked enough information to know for sure — and in some cases, few had ever cast a ballot.
In Franklin County, Ohio, several people flagged by HSI had never been registered to vote. After confusion over another person’s birthdate, the agent wrote: “Oops! Turns out the voter is actually his father.”
The emails show the inquiry soon expanded to canvassing groups, including questions about the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a progressive voter-turnout organization that federal agents raided in June – four months after the exchange.
In Fort Bend County, Texas, HSI subpoenaed the election director for records before supplying a list of names to check, according to records obtained by Democracy Forward and shared with CNN. When county officials asked for more details to ensure they had identified the correct voters, the investigator replied: “At this time, the information I sent is all we have. If you could just proceed with the information provided, that would be great. We may have to do additional checks on our end.”
“This looks like DHS scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Brendan Fischer, Director of Strategic Investigations at Campaign Legal Center, a voting-rights advocacy group.
Over the past 18 months, the administration has enhanced the citizenship records programs known as SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) with data from other federal agencies, a move that was praised by Republican election officials who nonetheless have acknowledged that the data-matching can produce false positives and requires further investigation. Separately, the Justice Department has been demanding that states turn over their voter rolls — bringing lawsuits against 30 states that have refused — so that the administration can do its own SAVE audits for ineligible voters.
“The expansion of SAVE failed to substantiate claims of widespread noncitizen voting, so now the administration is trying to save face by directing HSI investigators to pursue a very limited number of potential cases,” Fischer said.
A guidance document circulated within HSI last year, which CNN reviewed, tells agents working election-related cases to determine which federal laws give them authority to investigate before collecting evidence. It also directs them to consult prosecutors before issuing subpoenas or conducting interviews.
The document warns against public actions that could influence an election and bars immigration enforcement that “chills” voting. It also prohibits agents from bypassing election officials who control records or Justice Department divisions that oversee election matters.
DHS has also joined the administration’s continuing effort to find evidence supporting Trump’s unfounded claim that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
In February, HSI contacted the Arizona attorney general’s office with questions about previous reviews of the election. The outreach, first reported by VoteBeat, came days after Noem, then the Homeland Security secretary, held an unusual news conference in Arizona promoting a stalled Trump-backed election bill.
In the queries to officials working under Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, an HSI agent asked about claims involving late-arriving ballots in Maricopa County and supposed discrepancies in the ink used to print some ballots — allegations that had already been investigated.
“I have to get a report in by (close of business) today, so was hoping to have some of the materials soon if at all possible,” an HSI agent wrote in a follow-up email.
The attorney general’s office provided materials assembled during an earlier investigation by Mark Brnovich, the Republican who led the office until 2023, prompting additional questions from the HSI official on March 5.
Noem was fired by Trump that day, with her replacement by Mullin announced simultaneously. HSI’s 2020-related queries to the state attorney general ceased, but separately, the Justice Department obtained records from another review of that election from Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate. There has been no public investigatory action in the federal 2020 probes in Arizona since then.
Under Mullin, DHS has made sweeping claims of foreigners polluting the voter rolls of Democratic-led states while at times overstating what has been uncovered while working with Republican election officials.
Last month, DHS said it found more than 28,000 noncitizens (since revised to under 25,000) on the voter rolls of roughly two dozen mostly GOP-led states that voluntarily handed over their rolls.
But officials in two of those states – Georgia and North Carolina – have questioned the findings, saying the numbers are likely inflated and require more scrutiny. Republican officials elsewhere have stressed that the matches produced by SAVE must go through additional rounds of vetting once the federal government hands them over to states.
In Texas, one of the states DHS has touted for its cooperation, the secretary of state’s office recently informed local election officials that some voters whose registrations were cancelled because of the SAVE review might need to be added back to the rolls, because the state had records indicating they had already proved their citizenship at the DMV.
Still, DHS is urging states to let the administration inspect their voter rolls, noting that only state and local election officials – not the federal government – can remove voters.
The DHS voter audit operation faces multiple lawsuits alleging the federal data system is leading to sloppy purges that disenfranchise eligible voters. In one of those cases, a court found the DHS violated privacy law in how it revamped the data program and issued a ruling that has blocked its use for most states.
https://www.cnn.com/
DHS is appealing that ruling, and Mullin blasted it as coming from an “activist” judge.
The administration has not disclosed how many HSI investigations have led to referrals for prosecution or deportation beyond a small number of publicized cases. They include charges announced by the Justice Department this spring against several alleged noncitizen voters in New Jersey.
Those charges predated Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure that a state DMV error had mistakenly added thousands of noncitizens to New Jersey’s voter rolls, nearly 400 of whom cast ballots, according to the governor.
DHS officials say they’re investigating the blunder to tee up prosecutions and deportations. Sherrill has refused the administration’s request for data on those voters, saying “The request had no legal basis, and I will always protect New Jerseyans.”
In Nevada, meanwhile, DHS last week requested that state election officials meet virtually with Mullin to discuss the thousands of potential noncitizens purportedly registered to vote. In emails obtained by CNN, DHS said it appreciated Nevada’s “willingness to collaborate on this important effort” and hoped to schedule “as quickly as possible.”
A Nevada official waved off that request, telling DHS it had not adequately explained how it came up with its claims about the state’s voter rolls.
“Once we receive and evaluate that information, we will be in a position to engage in a productive and meaningful discussion with your office,” the official said.
DHS replied that its analysis “was not done using SAVE” and offered to explain its process and provide a list of suspected noncitizens during the meeting.
“Let’s set up a call,” the Nevada official responded.