Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says the agency has arrested 151 people and opened 1,620 additional cases as part of an investigation into noncitizens illegally casting ballots in U.S. elections.
Mullin said DHS is also preparing to investigate as many as 300,000 more cases, according to Fox News.
“We’re scrubbing them. We’re comparing them to those that are in the country illegally, those that are legal permanent residents and those that are citizens,” Mullin said.
Mullin said the pattern is consistent across the cases his department has reviewed.
“We continue to see that. Every single vote, Kayleigh, that we talk about, that was at the hands of an illegal canceled out a citizen that was legally registered and able to vote.”
The arrests and expanded caseload build on an effort DHS disclosed in July, when the White House released documents showing that at least 250,000 foreign nationals are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada alone.
At the time, DHS said it had notified election officials in those four states of “this serious threat to national security” and pledged support in removing ineligible registrants.
“The investigation is expanding to include multiple additional states. In addition, DHS will support the Department of Justice’s review of voter files obtained pursuant to their enforcement authority under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002,” DHS said.
A Michigan sheriff has separately gone public warning about noncitizens voting in his jurisdiction, part of a wider pattern of local officials flagging the issue as the federal probe expands.
A month before the July disclosure, DHS approved a plan letting states verify voter citizenship against federal databases and monitor mail-in and absentee ballot activity for signs of fraud.
Mullin’s update marks the first public tally of arrests to come out of the initiative, and signals the investigation is set to grow well beyond the four states first named in July.
