Trump’s voter hunt puts DHS workers in legal bind

A whistleblower's statement has revealed a controversial Trump administration initiative aimed at identifying noncitizen voters ahead of the November elections. The Unlawful Voter Initiative requires federal employees to misrepresent themselves on voter lookup tools, potentially violating state laws, according to the account. The Department of Homeland Security's probe also asks employees to create federal law enforcement records about voters based on potentially unreliable data, which could wrongly implicate U.S. citizens, the whistleblower warns.

The nearly 30-page disclosure, published by Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, includes screenshots and transcripts from a DHS training session for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staffers. The staffers were reportedly forced to complete a less than two-hour training session and begin using DHS-provided lists of individuals for investigations, with each agent tasked to review 40 individuals per day, spending about 12 minutes on each review.

The whistleblower contends that the initiative, launched in late August, is an attempt by President Donald Trump to interfere in the elections and that the short timelines would hinder proper investigations. The data used by DHS can be unreliable and inconsistent with state records, making any federal findings problematic, the whistleblower argues. The White House has not commented on the report.