Exclusive: ICE obtains local voter files in Forsyth County

ICE investigators are going straight to local election officials for individual voter files, and they obtained them in counties in North Carolina and Texas, according to emails shared with Axios.

Why it matters: President Trump's decades-long push to root out alleged noncitizen voting has evolved into a multi-agency effort reaching into state and local voter systems.

Zoom in: In November, an ICE staffer with the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor asked for registration information for two voters in Forsyth County, according to emails obtained from records requests made by Democracy Forward and shared with Axios.

• Forsyth County elections director Tim Tsujii, whose office is in Winston-Salem, tells Axios Raleigh that after consulting with the State Board of Elections, he released the redacted files to the Department of Homeland Security.
• "Absent a subpoena or court order, we generally treat requests for voter information from other government agencies like any other public records request," SBE spokesperson Pat Gannon said in an emailed statement.
• "What I provided was only a redacted copy of voter registration information, because state law requires that personal identifiable information — such as date of birth, driver's license number, social security number and signature — is to be kept confidential," Tsujii says.

Between the lines: As to whether the two voters had done anything wrong, Tsujii says he can't say.

• "We don't have any enforcement authority. Our job is to simply administer and conduct the elections," he says.
• The State Board of Elections does hold enforcement authority, he notes, so its investigations division would typically handle questions of a voter's registration legitimacy.

The big picture: Trump said he believes millions of people, including noncitizens, are voting illegally and that is why he lost the popular vote in 2016 and the general election in 2020.

• Documented cases of noncitizen voting are rare. An audit conducted by North Carolina elections officials after the 2016 election found 41 noncitizens voted, often because they didn't know the law. That's about 0.0009% of the nearly 4.8 million ballots cast — incapable of altering the outcome of any race, per the SBE.

What they're saying: "Using ICE to pursue a problem this rare should concern everyone. ... Americans have a right to understand the full scope of the administration's actions," said Democracy Forward attorney Dan McGrath.

• Neither Tsujii nor Jose Castillo — the election administrator for Webb County, Texas, which received a similar request in May — say they recall seeing requests like these before.
• "There's nothing there. But I get it, you've got to do your job," Castillo tells Axios. "To me, they could use their resources for something else that's more useful."

The other side: A DHS spokesperson declined to comment on active investigations.

Go deeper into what happened in Texas