Federal immigration agents have obtained voter registration files from at least two counties — one in Texas and one in North Carolina. Homeland Security Investigations accessed these files in May 2026 and November 2025. The revelation came through records requests, not voluntary disclosure.
Let that sink in. The same agency conducting mass deportation sweeps across the country now has access to local voter registration data.
Voter files contain sensitive personal information — names, addresses, dates of birth, citizenship status, and party affiliation. They exist to administer elections. They are not law enforcement databases. They are not immigration enforcement tools. Handing them over to ICE — or any federal immigration agency — creates an obvious and chilling threat: that voting, or simply being registered to vote, could make an immigrant community a target.
The timing matters. With midterm elections approaching and 2.7 million naturalized citizen voters in New York alone, the Trump administration has already threatened to deploy ICE agents to polling sites. Now we learn that federal immigration agents have been quietly collecting voter data from local counties. These are not isolated incidents. They are pieces of the same picture.
This is not immigration enforcement. This is voter surveillance. And it has no place in a democracy.
We're calling on Congress to immediately investigate how ICE obtained these voter files, demand a full accounting of every county that has shared voter data with federal immigration agencies, and pass legislation prohibiting the use of voter registration data for immigration enforcement purposes.