Armed federal agents are visiting homes across the United States as part of the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on alleged noncitizen voting, asking residents about their citizenship status and whether they have registered to vote.
Photos shared by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Northern California and Kansas City showed agents knocking on doors as part of investigations into alleged noncitizen voting—something the Trump administration has been raising concerns about since January 2025.
The government, and those calling for greater election security measures, argue the effort is necessary to protect election integrity, as only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote. Critics argue door-to-door visits risk intimidating lawful voters and represent a significant expansion of federal involvement in voter-roll investigations, which were traditionally handled by the states.
"It is deeply, deeply concerning on multiple levels. This is highly irregular and inappropriate in many ways, and they're using tactics designed to intimidate legitimate voters rather than address any significant problem," Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Newsweek Wednesday.
"The Trump administration has redirected huge numbers, huge amounts, of federal resources and federal agents from critical law enforcement duties in pursuit of the elusive pursuit of widespread noncitizen voting. Its actions continue to prove just the opposite of what they are trying to do. In fact, our election system does a good job, a very good job, of ensuring that minuscule exceptions that only eligible Americans are participating."
Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment Wednesday.
...
What is DHS Doing?
HSI's posts on X indicate that agents who traditionally focus on cross-border issues such as drug trafficking and child sexual exploitation are now focused on alleged voter fraud.
The posts, which include captions such as "American elections are for Americans," showed a clear shift in priorities for the agency, which is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to CBS News, agents were pulled from their regular assignments to assist with DHS' efforts to tackle noncitizen voters.
"Anyone visited by a federal agent, citizen or not, should say nothing beyond 'I want to speak with a lawyer'," Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow with the libertarian Cato Institute, told Newsweek. "They should not open the door or allow entry unless shown a warrant signed by a judge, and a form signed by an agency official is not the same thing. Knowingly making a materially false statement to a federal agent is a felony even when you’re not under oath. Silence is far safer than trying to explain yourself."
It was not immediately clear how HSI was identifying targets or what their specific directives were, but DHS has repeatedly stated that it is seeking to detain those immigrants who break U.S. laws, including green card holders who vote in elections.
"DHS says it is targeting 300,000 people using data it admits is inaccurate, both in public and internally," Beau Tremitiere, counsel and deputy director of impact programs for civic space and rule of law at Protect Democracy, told Newsweek.
"They have used that faulty data for investigations and arrests in a manner that intimidates American citizens during the voting period. As the Court weighs the illegalities of DHS's actions, eligible voters must stand together, be courageous, and make their voices heard."
A former HSI agent told CBS that in his 23 years with the agency, he had never heard of special agents being sent to private residences to verify voter eligibility.
Amanda Fischer, from Public Interest Legal, which has raised concerns about noncitizen voting, told Newsweek that this was not an unprecedented move.
"Responses to USCIS Form N-400 in Part 9, Questions 1-2 trigger these kinds of investigations everyday," she said. "Whether the federal government performs investigations via correspondence or door-knocking is their call."
...
Federal List of Noncitizen Voters Deemed ‘Unreliable’
The Trump administration has made it a priority to tackle what it has alleged is widespread voter fraud across the U.S., and it has highlighted cases of immigrants who have allegedly voted in federal elections.
On Monday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said it was investigating thousands of potential cases, telling Newsweek that 112 people had been charged across 20 states in the past seven weeks. Since the start of the second Trump administration, 155 people have been charged with voter fraud offenses.
Some of those charges were in California, after federal officials sued the state for access to 20,000 ballots they believed could belong to noncitizens. Los Angeles County later pushed back on the allegations, calling the government's data "unreliable."
While instances of immigrants voting in elections have been proven and successfully prosecuted, experts argue these cases make up a very small fraction of the electorate and therefore likely have little impact on overall results.
"The Trump administration has proven through their actions over the past two years that they cannot be trusted to accurately determine the eligibility of registered voters; they have repeatedly used unreliable data sources and questionable methods to incorrectly flag U.S. citizens as being ineligible to vote and then unlawfully demanded that those eligible citizens be removed from the voter rolls," Jonathan Diaz, the Campaign Legal Center's director for voting advocacy and partnerships, told Newsweek.
Ripple Effects of HSI Door Knocking
In their lawsuit, filed in September, Protect Democracy and other plaintiffs argued that the government was using flawed citizenship databases and rushed matching procedures to target lists that can include U.S. citizens, before sending the armed agents to question them at the height of election season.
The group argued that the result is a system that risks intimidating lawful voters while searching for a type of election fraud that studies and past prosecutions have generally found to be rare.
Weiser told Newsweek that this amounted to "political theater" which previous administrations would not have engaged in, especially in the remaining weeks before an Election Day, which Diaz agreed with.
"Federal law enforcement agents are not election officials; it is not their job to go door-to-door to check voters' eligibility or registration status. And federal agents, like everyone else, are prohibited by law from engaging in voter intimidation," he said.
"Only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections—that is the law in every state. If the Trump administration is concerned with ensuring our elections are safe and secure, then they should go back to providing state and local election officials with funding, resources and support to facilitate effective election administration."
Weiser said there could be another knock-on effect from using HSI agents in this capacity: the loss of investigative power when it comes to child trafficking, drug smuggling, and other serious cross-border issues.
"We have diverted so many resources behind efforts that are not making us safer, not improving the lives of Americans, and instead intimidating and harassing particular communities, and especially communities of color and communities where there's a significant portion of noncitizens or former noncitizens in it," Weisner said.
"In addition to devastating all of the other goals that those resources were supposed to be used for, it is devastating trust in the federal government in those communities, and I think distorting the agencies themselves in a way that will take some time to repair."
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: John Fitzpatrick and Gray R. Thomas