Virginia’s attorney general says DHS may have violated state election law after whistleblower report

Richmond, Va. (AP) — Virginia's Attorney General Jay Jones announced on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may have violated multiple state laws following a whistleblower's claim that DHS employees misrepresented themselves while using voter lookup tools to identify noncitizen voters.

According to the letter provided by The Associated Press, Jones demanded that DHS provide written confirmation of whether its employees were directed to access Virginia voters' information without proper permission. The state's Election Code prohibits the disclosure of such protected information to the federal government without a court order, Jones wrote in the letter addressed to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

The whistleblower's report, released by Democratic Senate leaders on Monday, includes transcripts of a DHS training session for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) staff. The training, conducted in late August, allegedly forced employees to drop other responsibilities and complete a less-than-two-hour training. Afterward, they were instructed to use DHS-provided lists of individuals and run them through state voter registration systems to identify noncitizen voters.

The whistleblower alleged that agents were tasked with reviewing 40 individuals per day, giving them approximately 12 minutes to determine each person's eligibility and create federal records for those who were deemed ineligible.