‘Extremely concerning’: Democrats alarmed by DHS document listing places distributing non-English election info 

By Brentin Mock

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 28: Activists, Haitians and supporters participate in a march and rally in Manhattan to denounce the Trump administration's immigration crackdown on the Haitian community on August 28, 2026, in New York City. The Supreme Court ruled in June allowing the Trump Administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 300,000 Haitian nationals. Thousands of Haitians have come to the United States recently as their country continues to spiral into gang violence. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Democratic officials are sounding the alarm about a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document listing places where election information is distributed in multiple languages. It suggests that DHS could target jurisdictions with large immigrant and non-English-speaking populations as it seeks to validate false claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens.

That is “extremely concerning,” Dan Freeman, litigation director at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), said in a public statement.

Though the document does not directly describe the Trump administration’s plans to use the list, Freeman told NPR that the “logical inference … is that they are thinking about prosecution of federal election crimes in jurisdictions where elections are conducted in a language other than English.”

Among the jurisdictions singled out in the document are three Georgia counties – Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett – which have large South American and Asian populations, the  Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported.

“We need to be ready, offensively and defensively, to protect the rights of our Spanish and Korean voters in the district to be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote,” Rep. Everton Blair (D-Ga.), whose district includes parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, told the AJC. 

The discovery of the document, first reported by NPR, comes as DHS and the FBI leaders have threatened to deploy armed federal agents to the polls this November — despite federal law expressly forbidding that. Moreover, last week an anonymous whistleblower alleged that DHS agents had used voters’ personal information to illegally access state voter rolls to comb through voting records in search of fraud.

In response to news outlets’ questions about the document, a DHS spokesperson said that noncitizens “should not be able to use a purported lack of knowledge of the English language as an excuse to avoid prosecution” if they vote in elections.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) revealed Friday that it got the DHS document through a FOIA request connected to its lawsuit demanding information about the agency’s plans to use U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents during the upcoming elections.

Since returning to office last year, President Donald Trump has made uncovering and prosecuting noncitizen voting a top priority for his administration. DHS has played a central role in that crusade.

On Saturday, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he was investigating 1,620 cases of noncitizens allegedly voting, and that his department has made 151 arrests. 

However, DHS has also faced criticism and been sued for exaggerating the number of noncitizens it claims to have discovered on voter rolls. Courts have also blocked the agency from using a federal database known for erroneously flagging people as ineligible to vote. 

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling whether to lift that block and allow DHS to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, though the system was not designed to search for ineligible voters. 

Meanwhile, dozens of studies and audits have found that noncitizen voting is rare. In the few cases where noncitizens have been caught registering to vote or actually casting a ballot, it was often due to errors by state and county election officials.