ICE-ing the midterms

In August 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appointed Heather Honey, an election conspiracy theorist, as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity. It is a new position that did not exist in previous administrations.

Honey, a private investigator, falsely claimed after the 2020 election that she had discovered that more votes were reported in Pennsylvania than voters. The Pennsylvania Department of State told Votebeat that her method was “not an accurate way to reconcile votes cast to the number of voters who participated in any individual election.” The false claim was cited by President Trump to justify his refusal to accept the results. “So in Pennsylvania, you had 205,000 more votes than you had voters,” Trump told the crowd on January 6, 2021.

Honey was also a key figure in a review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona. Honey worked as a subcontractor for Cyber Ninjas, which was hired to conduct a review of the election results in Maricopa County. The review “was described by experts as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology.” According to ProPublica, “Honey helped draft the final report,” which ultimately found no evidence of fraud.

Honey has also worked closely with prominent election conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell. Honey founded Pennsylvania Fair Elections, which is a partner of Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network. In 2022, Honey was a witness in an election challenge by Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who lost the election.

So what has Honey been doing for the Trump administration? We now know a lot more, thanks to the results of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Democracy Forward released Wednesday.

Documents obtained in the request reveal that “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collected tens of millions of voter records, explored undercover investigations against voter registration groups and considered feeding state election data into a system used to locate people for deportation.”

Honey was at the center of this effort. According to the documents, “48.4 million records were obtained by DAS Heather Honey through independent sources of information.” It is unclear what “independent sources” Honey used to collect the information. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) also “obtained 50.6 million records from the Department of Justice (DOJ).” Records from “Texas, Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio” were prioritized.

The data was sent to iLab for “identification of high-value targets.” The New York Times reported that this “appears to refer to the Innovation Lab within” HSI. According to the documents, some of the state data is also pending “entry into ELITE,” a tool made by Palantir that is “used to identify, prioritize and locate people targeted for immigration enforcement,” Democracy Docket reported.

This is all part of the Trump administration’s effort to identify “voter fraud” by noncitizens before the midterm elections. But the reality is that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare.

Because noncitizen voting is so rare, the Trump administration’s efforts are resulting in legal residents who were accidentally registered to vote being targeted for deportation. In August, the New York Times reported that “green card holders applying for citizenship have been placed in deportation proceedings for registering to vote.” Many did not vote or even intentionally register.

A December 2025 broadcast message sent to Office of the Principal Legal Advisor personnel that was released in the new documents stated that “ICE has begun coordinating with CBP, USCIS, and the Department of Justice to identify aliens who have illegally registered to vote or have unlawfully voted for criminal prosecution and/or removal proceedings.” The broadcast message noted that the law states a “conviction is not required,” nor is it required that the person “have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted.”

DHS investigates voter registration groups — and a skateboard shop

The documents also detail another tactic the Trump administration is using to seek examples of noncitizen voting: targeting voter registration groups. According to the new documents, HSI has been working to identify “organizations potentially facilitating unlawful voter registration or voting activity.”

An internal status report from June 1 shows that HSI investigated over 150 organizations it suspected of helping noncitizens register to vote. For the vast majority of organizations, HSI found “no derogatory information.” Twenty-six organizations are still under review and two were flagged for further investigation in Pennsylvania.

One of the organizations flagged in Pennsylvania is the state’s Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) branch. CAIR, one of the biggest Muslim civil rights organizations in the country, has been a frequent target of the right and was designated a terrorist organization by Republican governors in Florida and Texas.

The other organization that HSI investigated further in Pennsylvania is more surprising: Zumiez, a clothing and skateboard retail chain. The documents do not make it clear why Zumiez was under investigation in Pennsylvania. While Zumiez has worked with voter registration groups such as Voto Latino and Skate to the Polls, the brand is headquartered in Washington state. Zumiez has 20 retail locations in Pennsylvania.

HSI also worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into Black Fork Strategies, a progressive Ohio-based firm that works on voter engagement, and several other companies tied to it. (In June, the FBI raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which was founded by the same person as Black Fork Strategies.)

The documents also reveal that HSI has at least considered using undercover agents to investigate voter registration organizations, although it is unclear if it has followed through. Pennsylvania and New Jersey were highlighted as priority targets for undercover operations.

According to the June 1 status report, the goal was for undercover agents to “target identified organizations and engage in communications with these entities to substantiate recruitment methods and activities related to illegal alien voter registration.” If the agents found that the organizations were recruiting noncitizen voters, then they would “gather evidence, disrupt activities, and trace financial backing and support structures” in order to “support broader

investigative and enforcement actions.”

The ultimate plan for the undercover operation was to “initiate prosecutions and dismantle illicit facilitation networks.”