Armed DHS Agents Knock on Doors Asking Residents About Immigration Status and Voting History

In Kansas City, a photo posted by the local Homeland Security Investigations account shows four agents standing at the door of a woman on her porch. She is holding a child's hand. The Justice Department later identified her as Mariana Alexandra Dewey, a Peruvian national charged with four counts of voter-fraud related crimes, including illegally casting a ballot in the 2024 election. Her case has not yet been heard, and her lawyer declined to comment to CBS News.

The image is one piece of a broader operation that a CBS News investigation has documented. Uniformed, armed agents from the Department of Homeland Security have been knocking on doors in several states, asking residents about their immigration status and whether they have registered to vote or voted in past elections. The visits ramped up in September, in the middle of midterm campaign season, and continued through the most recent weekend. Photos and videos posted on X show agents approaching houses, some carrying firearms, under captions such as "AMERICAN ELECTIONS ARE FOR AMERICANS." In one video, agents hold a document labeled "Target List."

The Justice Department announced Monday that HSI agents in California had arrested more than 20 people, all green card holders, on allegations that they illegally registered or voted. In one of those arrests, dozens of federal agents arrived at the home of a 72-year-old man from Belize, who was taken out in his pajamas. He is charged with allegedly voting illegally in the past four elections.

DHS has said it believes as many as 250,000 noncitizens could be illegally registered to vote. The Justice Department's own count is far smaller: 156 people charged with voting-fraud related offenses since the start of the Trump administration, in a country with 227 million registered voters. A DHS spokesperson said HSI is "actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found" and that the aim is to ensure only American citizens elect American leaders.

The work is a shift for the agency. In June, DHS directed ICE to help deport alleged noncitizen voters. HSI, one of ICE's enforcement arms, typically handles criminal cross-border cases such as child exploitation, drug smuggling and money laundering. Internal documents reviewed by CBS News show that hundreds of agents were later pulled off their cases for a "surge" initiative. The directive, first reported by CNN, describes a "Criminal Voter Fraud" effort with "field reviews" in at least six states: California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin. Eric Balliet, a former HSI agent with 23 years of service under multiple administrations, said he never engaged in or knew of any initiative sending agents to private homes to verify voter eligibility.

How names land on the list is a central question. An HSI agent familiar with the effort, speaking anonymously, said DHS draws from internal databases, voter rolls and other datasets, then tries to match names against citizenship data from USCIS. In September, a USCIS whistleblower said employees were told to review voter information for tens of thousands of people, citizens included, with a quota of 40 subjects a day, roughly 12 minutes each. DHS says the efforts are conducted diligently and professionally and that there is no quota on criminality.

Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, which is suing over the door-knocking, expects many false positives. She pointed to Nevada, where officials initially said they had found nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls but ultimately could not provide evidence of a single illegally registered voter. She said the federal government is inserting itself into state voter-roll verification in an unprecedented way, one that "seems maximally designed to scare lawful voters."

Carol Anderson, a professor of African American Studies at Emory University, said the message reaches well beyond the people being questioned: naturalized citizens who see agents in their community may conclude they should stay away from the polls. DHS responded that those who are here legally and not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.

Hours after CBS published, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, wrote to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the department immediately stop activity he said was aimed at intimidating the public during the midterms. Next to watch are the Protect Democracy lawsuit, the response to Thompson's letter, and how the cases against the charged green card holders unfold.