President Donald Trump has deployed hundreds of federal agents, many of them pulled from criminal investigations, in an armed operation across multiple states to hunt for suspected noncitizen voters, according to internal Homeland Security records.

The documents describe a "Criminal Voter Fraud" initiative. Images and videos show Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security — arriving at private homes armed with guns, an unusual deployment for an agency that typically handles drug smuggling, money laundering and child exploitation cases.

According to CBS News, uniformed agents knocked on doors and asked residents about their voter registration, previous election participation and citizenship. At least six states were included in the "field reviews": California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

HSI shared several images of armed agents knocking on doors in a post on X, captioned: "HSI in Northern California will investigate any allegations of noncitizen voting and is committed to ensuring the enforcement of federal election law."

Eric Balliet, a 23-year HSI veteran, told CBS the operation is unprecedented for the federal agency.

"In my 23 years with HSI, I never engaged in or was aware of any incident of initiative that sent Special Agents to private residences to verify the eligibility of voters," Balliet said.

The door-knocking campaign expanded in September as the November elections drew closer and continued into October.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who served as the state's secretary of state and its top elections official before joining the Senate, received information from a whistleblower in September describing hundreds of immigration-service employees being directed to examine voter information, including that of American citizens. According to the disclosure, the employees received only one hour and 45 minutes of training before being handed 40 cases per day, leaving roughly 12 minutes to examine each person's voting status in what the account described as a frantic effort.

Per CBS, a video shows agents holding a document labeled "Target List." An HSI agent told the network that DHS pulls information from internal databases, voter rolls and other unspecified data sets, then attempts to match names against citizenship registration records from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that maintains the federal government's immigration and naturalization records.

Voting by noncitizens in U.S. federal elections has been a federal crime since 1996. The operation followed allegations of massive voter fraud in California. On Monday, the Justice Department announced it had charged 28 foreign nationals in the state with offenses involving alleged unlawful voting, fraudulent registration or related false statements. Eleven were arrested that day, and those charged represent just 0.0001 percent of California's registered voters. Prosecutors allege that some defendants also misrepresented their voting histories on U.S. citizenship applications.

DHS has defended its operations, stating that they are conducted legally and that the goal is to protect election integrity. Jessica Marsden, a lawyer for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan legal advocacy group, accused the department of attempting to "scare lawful voters from participating."

DHS has claimed that as many as 250,000 noncitizens may be unlawfully registered nationwide, but it has so far investigated just 156 people since Trump returned to office.

Source: Alternet