Whistleblower Alleges Trump Administration Used Illegal Tactics to Investigate Voters

WASHINGTON D.C. (KEYT) – Last week, Senator Padilla received a whistleblower disclosure revealing allegations of illegal actions within multiple Trump Administration agencies seeking "unlawful voters" nationwide.

On Sep. 8 of this year, an anonymous whistleblower alleged to legislators that employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have been directed by officers with the agency's Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate to use people's personal information to search state voter-registration systems shared Senator Padilla's Office Monday.

Each request may have violated state privacy laws and the whistleblower shared that officers have been told to mask their identities as federal employees and pretend to be voters on state election agency websites detailed the California Senator.

"[T]he Department [of Homeland Security] and USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] leadership have abruptly diverted FDNS [Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate] personnel to an 'Unlawful Voter Initiative' using highly questionable data and methods to identify purported unlawful voters," stated the letter signed by Senators Padilla and Schumer and directed to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of USCIS. "DHS materials admit these investigations will include naturalized U.S. citizens, some of whom will have federal law enforcement records created against them. FDNS employees are expressing concern that they are being directed to take actions that are against the law and Department policy, which will harm Americans."

Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution states that decisions regarding, "the times, places, and manner of holding Elections" are delegated to Congress and managed by each state.

It does not mention any executive branch position, office, department or agency.

Federal law does require states to maintain accurate voter rolls and allows people in most states to register to vote at their Department of Motor Vehicles, but does not authorize the Department of Homeland Security nor Citizenship and Immigration Services to participate in that maintenance.

"Donald Trump and his Administration are obsessed with election conspiracy theories and operate under the wrong assumption that they are above the law – they are not," argued California Senator Alex Padilla. "The whistleblower's disclosure outlines shocking allegations of unlawful and unethical conduct that includes potentially thousands of violations of state law and the use of highly questionable data, which they refer to as 'supplemental magic' to falsely flag naturalized U.S. citizens as ineligible voters in federal law enforcement records. At the same time, USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] is directing employees to ignore the law in search of voters' personal information because this Administration's unlawful attempts to coerce states to hand over their voter rolls have been rejected by the courts."

According to the letter, the whistleblower noted the following actions that could violate state and federal laws:

• USCIS directed officers to misrepresent themselves on state voter sites in order to access voter's private information. States like California require the use of personally identifiable information to access voter data and the Commonwealth of Virginia requires users of its voter records website to attest under penalty of law that the record is their own and the voter authorized such access.
• Employees were directed to create federal law enforcement records against individuals, including naturalized citizens, regardless of their right to vote
• Training materials admit that naturalized U.S. citizens are in the data being sent for further investigation even if internal records appear inaccurate or unreliable and targets of the initiative have no knowledge of the allegations nor an opportunity to correct data records
• Officers were told in August of 2026 to stop and work on the new initiative after completing a single one-hour-and-forty-five minute training video and tasked with completing quotas to review at least 40 people per day as well as that the full review was expected to be completed by September 12

The whistleblower last week shared that by August 25 of this year, officers were told to begin reviewing the data provided by the Department of Homeland Security to flag allegedly unlawful voters noted Senator Padilla's Office.

The initiative appears to be another attempt to federalize elections despite multiple previous attempts being blocked by federal courts.

The Department of Justice sent formal requests to over 40 states for copies of their respective voter lists and multiple states including California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Pennsylvania were sued by the federal government to force them to turn over their voter lists last year.

In January of this year, a federal judge dismissed the U.S. Department of Justice's lawsuit seeking access to Californian's private voter information calling the attempt, "unprecedented and illegal".

"The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) seeks an unprecedented amount of personal information related to California voters from California's unredacted voting rolls. The requested information includes the names, social security numbers, home addresses, voting history and other sensitive information of nearly 23 million Californians," wrote Federal District Judge David O. Carter in January's decision to dismiss the Justice Department's demand. "The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation. The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose. This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy."

Later the same month, over a quarter of the U.S. Senate signed a letter demanding an end to the Department of Justice's nationwide pursuit of private voter information.

In April of this year, California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a coalition of 23 other Attorneys General filing for a summary judgement in their legal challenge to the Trump Administration's unprecedented attempt to federalize elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a permanent injunction for key parts of Executive Order 14399 from taking effect in response.

"[I]t is hereby ORDERED and DECLARED that Sections 2 and 3 of the EO [Executive Order 14399] are legally void as they are ultra vires and unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers, and that Section 5 of the EO is merely precatory," explained the injunction issued in June.

Earlier the same week, the entire Democratic Caucus of the U.S. Senate penned a letter opposing a proposed change to Postal Service procedures that would create a federal registry of voters approved by the federal agency and a new attempt to circumvent decisions in federal courts regarding federal agency demands and executive orders concerning voting.

During testimony in June, Postmaster General David Steiner told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the U.S. Postal Service would refuse to deliver ballots to states that did not comply with the proposed rule which the federal agency argued was in compliance with Executive Order 14399.

Instead of complying with the June ruling, the Trump Administration appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in August that the U.S. Postal Service could continue to implement the sweeping changes, but notably did not rule on the legality of the policy.

Later the same month, a coalition of Attorneys General filed a new lawsuit challenging the rule change and, once again, a federal judge found the changes were unlawful and enjoined their implementation.

Late Sunday, Sep. 13, 2026, another federal judge halted the U.S. Postal Services attempts to fundamentally alter voting nationwide.

"As the Government concedes, the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the Rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the Rule," explained U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Carl Nichols in Sunday's order. "Plaintiffs have demonstrated that, absent an injunction, there is an increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections. The public has a strong interest in ensuring that doesn't happen."

According to the Senators, hundreds of employees have been diverted from their duties to participate in the initiative and noted, "these activities come as federal courts have unanimously rejected the Administration's attempts to coerce states to share their citizens' voter data. The Disclosure shows how DHS is deploying federal law enforcement resources to go around those judicial rulings and gather state voter information by any means, regardless of state laws. Further, the Administration's continued claims of election fraud signal its intent to use this unreliable evidence of 'unlawful voters' in ways that can disenfranchise eligible voters, disrupt state and local election administration, and subject election
officials to additional unwarranted threats of prosecution."

"These activities are especially alarming just weeks before the 2026 midterm elections. They also must be seen in the context of the repeated, unverified claims by President Trump of widespread noncitizen voter fraud," concluded the Senators in their letter. "Now, the Administration appears likely to use
the 'unlawful voters' supposedly identified with 'supplemental magic' in ways that disenfranchise
eligible voters and threaten state and local election officials before, during and after Election Day 2026."

The Senators demanded that the federal agencies immediately halt the potentially illegal initiative, share the records being used in the wide-scale investigation, and remove and law enforcement flags generated by the program.

The Trump Administration officials were asked to provide a response to the allegations by Sep. 21, 2026, the letter stated.