Federal immigration agents are investigating suspected voter fraud in Missouri as part of a nationwide effort by the Trump administration in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections.
In two social media posts on Sept. 3, the Kansas City office of Homeland Security Investigations said its agents were investigating suspected unlawful voting in St. Louis, citing the agency's commitment to "protecting election integrity and rooting out voter fraud wherever it occurs."
HSI is Immigration and Customs Enforcement's investigative arm, which typically deals with criminal matters such as human trafficking, weapons trade and financial fraud. The Department of Homeland Security is using the agency, CNN reports, in President Trump's hunt for widespread election fraud.
One photograph shows a federal agent walking in front of the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners office. Another shows two HSI agents outside a residential building. The agency posted that agents were "on the ground in St. Louis investigating suspected unlawful voting"; the post does not say when the photographs were taken or how many people are under investigation.
The Trump administration is making a nationwide push to investigate potential voting by people without legal status. On Wednesday, CBS News reported its investigation found that armed federal agents have been knocking on doors in several states, questioning residents about their immigration status and whether they have registered to vote or cast ballots in previous elections.
Missouri is among nine states listed in a federal lawsuit filed Oct. 15 that were targets of the large-scale investigation by Homeland Security Investigations. The suit filed by the League of Women Voters, Electronic Privacy Information Center and League of United Latin American Citizens alleges DHS illegally collected voting records from at least 47 states and combined them with other personal information to attempt to identify noncitizens accused of voting.
Voting rights advocates said HSI's decision to publicize unfounded investigations amounts to voter intimidation even for eligible Missouri residents. Denise Lieberman, the director for the Missouri Voter Protection Coalition, called the efforts by HSI "unprecedented" and something she hasn't seen over two decades on the job.
"This is happening now so close to the midterm because narratives about noncitizen voting rile people up and are intended to generate vitriol [and] generate divisiveness," she said. "This is about fear tactics. This is about intimidation. This is about trying to keep ethnic minority communities from exercising their right to vote."
A federal judge in California shared many of Lieberman's sentiments and issued a scathing preliminary injunction late Wednesday, curtailing the DHS' so-called "Unauthorized Voter Initiative" from executing certain investigations through Election Day.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín's decision said the Trump administration's use of armed agents, unreliable voter data and a social media publicity campaign — specifically noting the two St. Louis posts — likely violated the Voting Rights Act's protections against voter intimidation.
A separate suit brought against DHS by the NAACP also alleges the administration's threats to send armed immigration agents to the polls during the November midterms equated to voter intimidation against communities of color.
While federal prosecutors in Kansas City charged at least two Green Card holders this month with voting illegally, including a Cass County man and a McDonald County woman, there is no conclusive evidence of widespread voter fraud in Missouri.
The federal government said that both people were legally authorized to live in the United States but were not eligible to vote in federal elections. The cases are pending.
Robert Patrick, a spokesperson for the Eastern District of Missouri, told STLPR they have not charged any election fraud cases, but Department of Justice policy is to neither confirm or deny when an investigation is taking place.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, has kept a registry of people convicted of voting illegally since 2000. Of the 30 cases in Missouri, STLPR found two tied to people without legal status. The database includes cases involving fraudulent voter registration, forged ballot-petition signatures and other election-related offenses. As of 2022, more than 4.2 million Missourians were registered to vote.
The Trump administration has faced scrutiny over its claims of voter fraud nationwide. In July, the Department of Homeland Security admitted to inflating the number of people without legal status who could be registered to vote.
Across the country, 156 people have been charged with voting-related offenses since the beginning of Trump's second administration, according to Department of Justice figures cited by CBS News. Federal data show there were more than 211 million people in the United States registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election.
ICE, which oversees HSI, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This story has been updated.
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