Inside ICE's Election-Fraud Machine: 99 Million Records, Palantir's Deportation Tool, and a Raid on a Progressive Organizing Network
NEW (Oct. 7, 2026): Democracy Forward released 166 pages of internal ICE/HSI records offering the fullest picture yet of the machinery behind the administration's election-fraud hunt — and of how little it has found. The documents show Homeland Security Investigations running a "phased national initiative" of voter-roll acquisition, data analysis, and field investigations, with weekly progress reports shared with White House officials beginning in July.
The scale of the data: A June 1 HSI report said investigators had ingested 50.6 million records from a Justice Department dataset plus another 48.4 million records that Heather Honey — a senior counselor to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin — obtained through what the report called "independent sources of information." The documents also show the agency using Palantir's ELITE tool to process state voter rolls — a tool Palantir describes as "identifying the location of known foreign nationals who meet criteria for removal." Voter-roll data apparently flowing into a deportation-targeting system is the sharpest single fact in the trove.
The targets: An internal comparison described a "network-based investigative approach, prioritizing organization and facilitation analysis over individual leads." Investigators reviewed dozens of voter-registration nonprofits in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and elsewhere — many reviews turning up nothing. But in Ohio, HSI and the FBI developed plans around seven companies described as "consolidation centers" associated with Black Fork Strategies, a progressive canvassing firm; on June 8 ICE notified senior officials it planned search warrants and interviews with more than 100 current and former employees — and three days later, federal agents raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group with extensive ties to Black Fork. HSI also explored sending undercover agents into organizations suspected of facilitating noncitizen registration, monitored 2026 primaries for "trends, vulnerabilities, or indicators," and opened probes touching "Counties with 2020 Results" and "Voter Machines."
The legal shortcut: Internal guidance distributed to ICE attorneys says suspected unlawful voting can trigger deportation without a criminal conviction — or even knowledge of illegality: "There is no requirement that the alien have knowledge that he or she has illegally voted, and no conviction is required." ICE Deputy Director Charles Wall: "HSI is heavily working these cases."
The yield, again: By late May, HSI had opened 418 voter-fraud cases and made 64 administrative arrests — but 318 of those cases had not been referred for prosecution. That corroborates the picture in DHS 'Unlawful Voter Initiative': Five Weeks Out, the Hunt Has Found Almost Nothing: a vast apparatus finding almost nothing. DHS's statement: "DHS has been incredibly transparent about the acquisition and the analysis of publicly available voter files." Democracy Forward CEO Skye Perryman: "It appears the president and his allies want to pick their voters, as opposed to the way things are supposed to function in a democracy where voters pick their leaders."
The voting-machine thread: The trove also reveals that Mullin sent letters in August to the White House and DOJ arguing that foreign-made components in voting machines could "potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain" — the same national-security framing underlying the Cleta Mitchell/Tina Peters seizure scheme tracked in The Voting-Machine Federal-Takeover Push: "Regulate," Not "Seize" — but the Goal Is Federal Control Before Nov. 3.