DHS Is Knocking on Doors About Voting Now, Because Apparently the Country Needed Another Bad Idea

CBS News reported that armed, uniformed Department of Homeland Security agents have been knocking on doors in several states to ask residents about immigration status and whether they registered or voted. That is a hell of a way to build public confidence two weeks before an election: send federal agents to the porch and hope nobody notices the intimidation-shaped object sitting there with a clipboard.

The administration says it is pursuing illegal noncitizen voting. DHS told CBS that it is focused on investigating election fraud and that people who are lawfully here and not breaking other laws have nothing to fear. Fine. But CBS also reported that internal material describes a multi-state “Criminal Voter Fraud” surge using field reviews in California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin. The government is taking an immigration-enforcement apparatus and steering it straight into election administration, like somebody driving a boat through the Revere Beach rotary because the GPS said “shortest route.”

The reporting matters because the operation is not just a press release and a couple of empty Michelob bottles rolling around the floorboard. CBS found that Homeland Security Investigations agents were sent to private homes, and that the agency drew on voter rolls and citizenship-related data to generate leads. A former HSI agent told CBS he had never seen the agency deploy special agents to residences to verify voter eligibility during his 23-year career.

There is no dispute that noncitizens cannot legally vote in federal elections, and actual criminal allegations should be investigated through normal due process. The Justice Department has recently announced charges in individual alleged illegal-voting cases, with the usual and necessary reminder that an indictment is an accusation, not a conviction. But turning a small number of alleged crimes into a nationwide doorstep spectacle is not sober election administration. It is the kind of stunt that makes lawful voters, especially naturalized citizens, wonder whether casting a ballot comes with a surprise visit from the feds and a side of onion rings.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, responded in an October 21 letter demanding that DHS halt what he characterized as public-intimidation activity. That is a partisan assessment, not a court finding; the important documented point is simpler and uglier: DHS agents are conducting voter-related home visits while voting is underway, and the administration is defending the effort as enforcement.

Boston translation: if you want to investigate a crime, investigate a crime. If you want to make every immigrant, naturalized citizen, and nervous voter feel like the government has parked outside with the CB radio on, call it “integrity” and pretend nobody can smell the roast beef burning.

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Featured image: ICE HSI Special Response Team (SRT) San Francisco 1.jpg by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.