House Homeland Democrats ask DHS for election-security briefing and an end to door-to-door voter checks

By Renata Vos

WASHINGTON — With nine days until the Nov. 3 midterm elections, the top Democrats on the House Homeland Security and Intelligence committees have asked the Department of Homeland Security for a briefing on how it shares election-threat information with states, and the Homeland panel’s ranking member has separately demanded that DHS halt door-to-door checks on suspected noncitizen voters.

The department says its election work is focused and lawful. When it released its 2026 Election Infrastructure Security Plan on Sept. 24, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said, “Election security is national security. Under the leadership of President Trump, CISA has returned to its core mission to protect critical infrastructure.” He said the plan “will be implemented in full” and is “crucial to the security, freeness, and fairness of choosing the leaders of our country.”

On the door-to-door operations, DHS told CBS News that “DHS and DOJ are laser focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of U.S. citizens,” adding, “Those who are here legally and are not breaking other laws have nothing to fear.” The department told NPR, “We have no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

A federal judge in California has since limited those operations in nine states through election night, a ruling the government could appeal.

The briefing request

In an Oct. 20 letter to Mullin, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, formalized earlier requests for a briefing. They asked that officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) appear “this week or next week.”

The letter says that in classified summer briefings to committee staff, attendees “were struck by the relative lack of coordination among interagency partners,” and that briefings traditionally offered to all House members before federal elections were not held this year. It also says I&A, which has joined CISA at past election briefings, has been absent this year.

The two Democrats wrote that CISA “has lost nearly 1,000, or one-third, of its employees and eliminated its election security team,” and that it ended funding for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Multi-State ISAC. They wrote that DHS has not restored EI-ISAC funding despite language in the joint explanatory statement accompanying the fiscal 2026 homeland security law, P.L. 119-86. They also wrote that the 2026 security plan “arrived weeks behind schedule,” and that I&A “has lost approximately 35 percent of its workforce.” The Washington Post reported Oct. 4 that state election officials had raised similar concerns about federal support.

The letter also questions the role of Heather Honey, DHS’s deputy assistant secretary for election integrity, citing what the lawmakers call her “documented history of denying the result of the 2020 election.” In February, Honey told state election officials that immigration agents would not be at polling places, NPR reported.

Copies went to Acting CISA Director Nick Andersen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Matthew Kozma, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R-Ark.). The Democrats’ correspondence page lists no DHS reply.

The door-to-door letter

A day later, Thompson sent Mullin a second letter demanding “the immediate cessation” of what he described as DHS law enforcement activity “aimed at intimidating the public.” He cited a CBS News report that federal agents were knocking on doors to locate suspected noncitizen voters, and he cited two federal statutes, 18 U.S.C. § 593 and § 594, which the letter invokes against deploying armed federal officers to polling places and against voter intimidation. The letter calls the effort “voter intimidation” and says it serves “President Trump’s voter suppression agenda.”

The administration describes the work as enforcement of existing law. DHS told CBS that “far from being rushed or untrained, these investigative efforts are conducted diligently and professionally,” and that “there is no quota on criminality.”

The court order

On Oct. 22, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a 19-page order barring DHS field operations that target people known or suspected to be citizens, or that rely solely on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data matching, in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin, NPR reported. The order took effect Friday and runs through election night.

The plaintiffs are San Francisco, Santa Clara County, nurses’ unions and Voto Latino, represented by Protect Democracy and the National Immigration Law Center. According to NPR, a declaration from USCIS official Nicolas Bartell acknowledged a “low possibility” of error in the matching process.

What comes next

Neither committee has scheduled a public hearing on election security before Nov. 3, and the House is in recess.

The Inquisitor has asked DHS, CISA, the White House and the offices of Chairman Garbarino and Ranking Member Thompson for comment, and will update this story with any response.