ICE allegedly collects 48.4 million voter records to hunt for fraud. Then they consider feeding the data into a system used to track people for deportation

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has compiled 48.4 million voter records as part of a broad federal initiative to investigate voter fraud ahead of the 2026 midterms. These details come from a collection of documents obtained by Democracy Forward through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, revealing that the agency also explored using undercover operations against voter registration groups and considered integrating state election data into tools typically reserved for tracking individuals for deportation, Democracy Docket reports.

At the heart of this strategy is Heather Honey, a senior adviser to the ICE director and senior counselor to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. Honey is known for promoting false claims about the 2020 election, and her influence within the administration’s election operations has been a point of interest for some time.

The records indicate that the agency’s investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, secured 48.4 million voter records from independent sources connected to Honey. They framed this data collection as a strategic line of effort for their fraud investigations.

This shows how deeply DHS’s enforcement wing is now involved in the election process

This was not the only source of data for the agency. ICE also obtained 50.6 million records from the Department of Justice and another 26,000 records from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The focus was clearly on specific regions, with the agency prioritizing records from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

The documents suggest that state voter roll information may have been entered into the Palantir ELITE system. This is a tool that ICE specifically uses to identify, prioritize, and locate people for immigration enforcement.

The scope of these operations extended beyond just collecting files. Homeland Security Investigations considered deploying undercover agents to target nonprofit organizations that handle voter registration.

The initial plan was to focus on New Jersey and Pennsylvania by identifying these groups through special search engines and then digging through other databases to find what the records referred to as “derogatory information.” They also spent time exploring investigations into voting machines and counties that had specific results during the 2020 election. The agency even monitored primary elections to look for trends, vulnerabilities, or indicators that could impact what they define as “election integrity.”

To round out these efforts, the agency coordinated with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service regarding their voter fraud investigations. This entire situation provides a look into the concerns raised by state election officials who have been asked by the administration to hand over their voter files. These officials have consistently asked where that information goes once it reaches the federal government and how it is actually utilized.

These revelations clarify that the federal government is using immigration enforcement resources in ways that reach far into the administration of elections. While the agency has been busy gathering and analyzing these millions of records, they did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding these findings.