DHS Email Listing Multilingual Ballot Jurisdictions Draws Scrutiny

Today’s Focus

A heavily redacted email from within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), first reported by NPR on Sept. 18, shows that agency personnel last year circulated a list of U.S. jurisdictions that provide election materials in languages other than English.

The email, obtained through public records requests and dated to 2025, does not spell out why the list was assembled or how DHS planned to use it. Large portions of the message and its attachments were blacked out before release, according to NPR.

Federal law under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act requires roughly 330 jurisdictions to offer bilingual ballots and voter materials, based on U.S. Census Bureau determinations tied to the size and English proficiency of local language-minority communities. The Justice Department, not DHS, has historically enforced that mandate.

DHS did not respond to NPR’s questions about the origin or purpose of the internal list. The agency has previously said it is working with state election officials to identify noncitizens who may be improperly registered to vote, part of a broader Trump administration push announced earlier this year to tighten voter-roll maintenance.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March directing federal agencies to assist states in verifying citizenship of registered voters and to share immigration data for that purpose. Portions of that order were blocked by a federal judge in April, though the administration is appealing.

The NPR report lands as early voting opens in several states ahead of the November midterms. The Guardian reported Sept. 18 that campaigns are already shifting toward cost-of-living messaging while the White House continues to focus on ballot access rules, including mail-in voting.

The Debate

Supporters argue

Administration allies say DHS involvement in election integrity is both lawful and overdue. White House officials have argued that noncitizen voting, while rare, is a genuine vulnerability, and that only the federal government has the immigration records needed to flag it.

Trump, in a statement accompanying his March executive order, said the country must “end the deliberate refusal to enforce federal voter laws.” Supporters point to the order’s language directing agencies to share information with states that request help verifying citizenship.

Conservative election groups, including the Heritage Foundation’s election law reform initiative, have long argued that jurisdictions offering ballots in multiple languages should also face heightened scrutiny of their voter rolls, because language-assistance requirements often correlate with large immigrant populations. Hans von Spakovsky of Heritage has said federal data-sharing is “the only practical way” to identify duplicate or ineligible registrants.

Republican members of the House Administration Committee have also defended DHS coordination with state election officials, saying it fills a gap left by what they call inconsistent Justice Department enforcement. They contend that gathering baseline information, including which jurisdictions offer non-English materials, is a normal first step for interagency planning.

Critics argue

Voting-rights organizations and Democratic lawmakers said the redacted email fits a pattern they find alarming. The Brennan Center for Justice told NPR that DHS has no statutory role in administering elections and warned that assembling lists tied to language access could chill compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), a former California secretary of state, said in a statement that “federal immigration authorities have no business building files on jurisdictions that help citizens vote in the language they understand best.” He called for the full, unredacted email to be released to Congress.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) said the disclosure raises the possibility that bilingual-ballot jurisdictions could be targeted for federal audits or immigration enforcement actions near polling places. LULAC President Roman Palomares said the group would ask the DHS inspector general to investigate.

Guardian columnist Rebecca Solnit wrote Sept. 17 that the administration’s cumulative moves on mail-in voting, voter-roll purges and now language-access data amount to an effort to “disrupt the electoral process” ahead of the midterms.

What the experts say

Academic and nonpartisan researchers describe noncitizen voting as extremely rare. A 2017 Brennan Center review of the 2016 election found 30 suspected incidents out of 23.5 million votes cast in 42 jurisdictions studied, a rate of roughly 0.0001%. A 2014 Government Accountability Office audit of state voter rolls found similarly small numbers.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has noted that Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1975 and reauthorized in 2006, is enforced by the Justice Department, and that DHS’s enabling statutes do not mention election administration.

Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who directs the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, told NPR that federal interest in language-assistance jurisdictions is unusual and warrants explanation. He noted that most bilingual-ballot jurisdictions are in California, Texas, Florida and New York, states with large citizen populations of Latino and Asian American voters.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 24% of U.S. Latino registered voters said they preferred to receive election information in Spanish or in both English and Spanish.

By the Numbers

330: approximate number of U.S. jurisdictions covered by Section 203 bilingual-ballot requirements, per the Census Bureau’s 2021 determinations.

30: suspected noncitizen votes identified out of 23.5 million cast in a 2017 Brennan Center review of the 2016 election.

24%: share of Latino registered voters who preferred election information in Spanish or bilingually, per a 2021 Pew Research Center survey.

1975: year Congress added Section 203 language-assistance requirements to the Voting Rights Act, according to CRS.

March 2026: month Trump signed the executive order directing federal agencies to assist states in verifying voter citizenship, per the White House.

April 2026: month a federal district judge blocked portions of that order, per court filings cited by NPR.